By means of keeping to this policy of ruthlessness life went happily for the young Geoffrey Greenes. There was a period of stress and strain in the second year of their marriage when Helen decided that a frankly futurist style was the only one in which she could express herself sincerely. Her first attempts were almost ludicrously unsuccessful, and Geoffrey was so rash as to burst out laughing as he looked at a canvas in which a large purple cylinder placed on a still larger purple cylinder, and surmounted by a smaller cylinder of shrimp pink faintly spotted, was entitled simply "Country woman." Helen looked at him coldly. "Aren't you being a little crude, Geoffrey?" she asked. "Don't mislay your sense of humour, I do implore you," he urged still laughing, "I expect this is a very important picture, but to the uninitiated eye it's very funny." "That's just the trouble, Geoffrey. You are uninitiated--almost painfully so. I've been feeling out of sympathy with you for some time. I'm prepared to agree with you that this is bad work, though the idea is perfectly sound, but I think it's bad because of you. I'm being clogged by marriage, it's hampering me appallingly." "You're working yourself up, Helen," said Geoffrey curtly, "I refuse to be made responsible because you do bad work." "I'm sorry." Helen's voice was hard. "But the fact remains that indirectly you are responsible. Marriage is not conducive to good work, and I've decided to cut it out for a time anyhow. I'm quite contented to go on living in this house if you will arrange to sleep in your dressing-room and leave me entirely unmolested." "You're unpardonable. I don't know how you dare use a word like that about me." "I'll apologise for it if you like, it wasn't the word I meant. But I wish to be quite free and not be expected to sleep with you again." "Certainly," Geoffrey agreed stiffly, "that is for you to decide." Their reconciliation a few weeks later was disproportionately trivial. Helen's futurist fever had burned itself out, and she was temporarily high and dry without any interest in art. Geoffrey came into her studio one night to find her looking ruefully at "Country Woman." She went up to him and kissed him. "I've been a bloody fool, Geoffrey darling, I'm terribly sorry. You were quite right; it really is a ghastly picture. Let's burn it now." "You've been awful," said Geoffrey, but his voice was kind. "I know I have, but I swear I never will again. Come on, let's burn it." Childishly they cut the canvas into strips, crumpled it up, and crammed it into the fire, and as Helen quoted happily "if thine eye offend thee pluck it out" the last traces of Geoffrey's resentment melted and he held her to him with a passion intensified by the past weeks of restraint. No quarrel marked the end of her next phase, which was a return to the impressionist style of her pre-marriage period. "It's no good," she proclaimed dismally, "I'm doing rotten work."