He was by this time fascinated by her. His happiest afternoons were spent in South Kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him. To be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another. Many of her views were impracticable, naturally. Psychological as his tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to deride them in his confidences. The only dramatist alive was Ibsen, he said; yet he did not model himself on Ibsen, albeit he was delighted when she exclaimed, "How Ibsenish that is!" Many of her views were impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were intensely stimulating. The more he was with her, the less he doubted her worthiness of sinning for his sake. He was so different from the ordinary dramatic author! On the ordinary dramatic author, with no ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away. He did not wish to be associated with a scandal--it would certainly be unpleasant--but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact. And he would be very good to her; he would marry her. She was adorable! His meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than she had hated the tedium of her life. She knew that she loved him. She was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there. She wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised what an awful thing had come to her. But she was drunk--intoxicated by the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as Lucas Field could be in love with _her_. She revered him for not having told her of the feelings that she inspired. Her courage was sustained by the belief that he did not divine her own--that she would succeed in stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. Yet she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached--he implored her to go away with him. CHAPTER VIII