In that third week late one afternoon they went on the lake. Ingeborg paddled slowly along the middle of the quiet water towards the sunset, and Ingram sat at the other end with his back to it and watched her becoming more and more transfigured as the sun got lower. Very early in their acquaintance he had conveyed to her that she ought always to wear white and that hats were foolish and unnecessary; therefore she did wear white, and sat hatless in the punt. The light blinded her. She could see nothing of him but a dark hunch against a blaze of sky. But when she wanted to turn the punt towards the relief of the shadows along the shore he instantly stopped her, and told her to keep on straight into the eye of the sun. "But I can't see," she said. "But I can. It's for my picture. It's going to be a study of light." "Shall you be able to do it from the sketches?" "No. From you." "Why, you said you couldn't anywhere here because there wasn't a proper place." "There isn't. I'm going to do it in Venice. In my studio there." "But can you from memory?" "No. From you." She laughed. "How I wish I could!" she said. "I ache and ache to see things, to go to Italy--" She sighed. The vision of it was unendurably beautiful. "Well, you'll have to. Not only because it's monstrous you shouldn't, monstrous and shocking and unbelievable that you should be stuck in Kökensee for years on end and never see or hear or know any of the big things of life, but because you can't spoil my great picture--the greatest I shall ever have done." "Robert could never leave his work." "I don't want Robert to leave anything. It's you I'm going to paint. And I can't do without you." "How very awkward," she smiled, "because Robert can't do without me, either." He plunged his arm into the water with sudden extreme violence, scooped a handful of it high into the air, and dashed it back again.