"I feel as if I couldn't breathe on those wretched Sunday nights," said Philip to his faithful Sigismund. "It is all very well while I can see to paint--for I have grown a heathen since--since--_she_ threw me over--and I stick to my easel on Sundays as well as week days; but when the light goes my pluck goes with it. I light my pipe, but the tobacco chokes me. I fold my arms upon the window-sill; and try to think out some difficulty in the composition of my picture; but it's no use. I find myself thinking of _her_, and wondering whether she is arraying herself in one of those gauzy white muslins, with floating turquoise-coloured ribbons, in which she looks the incarnation of freshness and innocence. And then I light my lamp and open my box of water-colours, and make a little sketch of her in the cloudy muslin, and the sky-blue ribbons, with sunshine upon her hair, and sunshine upon her dress, and the tenderest shadows hovering about and around her. Ah, Sigismund, if you are ever desperately in love, thank Providence that you can't paint. That's a fatal power. To conjure out of a few paltry pigments the beloved face in all its dangerous beauty, instinct with looks of love that never will illumine it for you; to be for ever calling into life and brightness the same lovely shadow, and to know that it is only a beautiful phantasm; to kiss the lips that are nothing but a patch of colour wet from your own brush; to pore upon eyes that owe their sole light to artful touches of the pencil,--ah, dear friend, _that_ way madness lies! If St. Anthony had been as good a draughtsman as William Crawford, he wouldn't have been _Saint_ Anthony; for he could never have rid himself of the sirens. When I have finished my sketch, and have admired it, and have got into a passion with it, and have torn it into a hundred fragments, I put on my hat and go out. But even out of doors the atmosphere seems close and stifling, and I can scarcely breathe till I get beyond Holloway, to the crown of Highgate Hill; and then I stand on the bridge and look down upon London, and think what a vast Babylon it is, and how many girls there are within its boundaries ready, like Florence Crawford, to sell themselves to the highest bidder--slaves who only lack the badge of slavery. I shall go to Switzerland in the autumn, Sigismund, and paint from nature, and try if I can't walk down my disappointments amongst the mountains." As the time when Miss Crawford was likely to become Mrs. Lobyer drew nearer, poor Philip found his Sabbath evenings more difficult of endurance.