THE memory of that portrait left Felix bewildered and irritated. It seemed that no one else saw in it quite what he had seen. Rose-Ann praised it—but with some reserve which made him feel that she did not really like it. Clive was delighted with the certainty with which the painter had captured his characteristic gesture.... Only he himself, apparently, saw it as a criticism, profound and harsh.... The painter herself least of all saw it as a criticism. “Is that what you really think of me?” he had asked her. “I don’t think when I paint pictures,” she had said. “I’m too busy working out the problems of form and colour. Don’t you like it?” “I like it as a picture. I don’t like it as a—a prophecy,” he said. “A prophecy? Oh, there you come with your literary interpretations. Can’t you forget that stuff, and learn to look at a picture as a picture?” She had ceased to be the Sybil, and become again the careless bohemian girl-artist, talking the talk of her tribe.... Pictures were just pictures—yes, he had heard that before. Morose and fretful, he walked up and down in the studio in the evening, rejecting Rose-Ann’s plans for other entertainment; or sat at his desk, exasperatedly trying to force himself to begin work on some half-formed idea for a play. He was angry at himself for being the indecisive, inadequate figure of that painting. He saw now what being an artist meant—the calm energy, the technical erudition, the vast patience that was needed. He wished to be that kind of person. And the more he wished it, the more weak and petulant he seemed to himself. And what must he seem to Rose-Ann? She must despise him in her heart.... For a week he fidgeted and fumed about the studio, ashamed of his childish behaviour and yet unable to control it. He wondered why Rose-Ann did not tell him what she really thought of him.... It was as if he were trying, by a more and more outrageous parade of his weakness, to force her to break silence and speak out. Late one afternoon, when he had crumpled up the sheet of paper on which he had been trying to write, and thrown it on the floor with a silly gesture of failure, she put down her sewing and came up to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “What is the matter, Felix, dear?” she asked. He drew himself away. “I wish you would let me alone,” he said. “Very well,” Rose-Ann said gently, and went and put on her hat and cloak and left the studio. 2 For a moment he sat there, looking at the door through which she had gone with a sudden sense of utter desolation. They had had quarrels before, but this was different. He had driven her away.... It would serve him right if she never came back.... Why had he been making such a fool of himself? Why had he been behaving like a silly child? And all at once he felt that he knew the answer.... He was worrying about that damned job of his.