On their settling down once more at Naples, she was again seen at Florelli's, bent on making up for lost time. Her artistic studies had been of necessity but intermittent. In Morris she beheld her paramount duty; he had been as ardent and jealous as any young lover, lamenting and grudging every minute that Art took her from his service. He laughed at the persistence with which she continued to snatch stray hours for drawing. Her future was his care now, he insisted. He hated to think of those soft, brown eyes squandering their beams upon inanimate objects. Why did she want to waste any of the precious hours of her glorious youth shut up in a crowded, overheated studio, that stank of paint and turpentine and microbes and humanity? But Evarne had not entirely abandoned the study of Philosophy for that of Love. She told him, with fascinating seriousness, that in order to maintain the mental balance that was described as "Happiness," it was necessary to both cultivate and provide an outlet for the intellectual faculties, as well as for those impulses that were revelling with such joyous abandon amid "the roses and raptures of vice." Thus she was sadly disappointed when, within a fortnight of settling down once more seriously to work, Morris announced that he was going to Paris for a week or two, and of course expected her to accompany him. She had just arrived at one of those stages, so delightful to pass through in any study, when a distinct advance in power is felt. The close of each day's efforts left her with the exhilarating feeling of having surpassed herself--of having successfully overstepped her previous highest limit. To abandon her work at this crisis was the last thing she desired. "Morris, dearest," she pouted in sudden protest, "why do we wander about so very much? It is so delightful here." "But I must go to Paris now. I have business." "I thought you never had to do anything you didn't want to? Anyway, dearie, couldn't you live without me for a fortnight? I know how it will be! If you have got me with you we shall end up by roaming all through the winter, but if I am here at 'Mon Bijou,' waiting for you--why, then, you will return quickly."