"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about anything. If I can't paint you--a human, breathing _you_--with all of you there on the canvas--_all_ of you, soul, mind, and body--all of your beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness--your errors, your nobility--_you_, Valerie!--then there's no telling what I'll do." She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting. It became very still in the sunny studio. CHAPTER IV In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something--he didn't understand what--had suddenly left him satiated--and with all the uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could force no further. He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission left him untempted, unresponsive, weary. He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a brush to it. "It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's country home one delicious morning--"it's confoundedly odd that I should turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a sudden throb of fear smilingly. "Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield without rest." "Yours does." "Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my friend. Don't you even keep _mi-carême_?" Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even Corot--but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations. "There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida. "I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is for you." "For _me_!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most charming of Mrs. Collis." "They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become and what a furor you've aroused!... And you deserve it," added Neville, coolly. Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and understood the honesty of the comment. "That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters."