Of taking a wife. Of marriage. Most especially of love.

It wasn’t a matter he was comfortable discussing; even thinking of love made him uneasy, as if doing so was somehow tempting fate. Yet what he’d seen and grappled with while painting his sister Patience and her husband, Vane Cynster, and later the other couples who’d sat for him, what he’d reacted to and striven to portray on canvas was so inherently powerful he’d have had to be blind not to comprehend the ability of that power to impact on his life. To affect him, to distract him. Perhaps to sap the creative energy he needed to give his works life.

If he surrendered to it.

If he ever fell in love, would he still be able to paint? Would falling in love, marrying for love, as his sister and so many others in his wider family had, be a wellspring of joy, or a creative disaster?

When painting, he poured all he was into the act, all his energies, all his passions; if he succumbed to love, would it drain him and impair his ability to paint? Was there even a connection-was the passion that fired love the same as that which fired his creative talent, or were the two totally separate?

He’d thought long and hard, but had found little comfort. Painting was an intrinsic part of him; every instinct he possessed violently recoiled from any act that might reduce his ability to paint.

So he’d recoiled from marriage. Stepped back. Regardless of Timms’s view, he’d made the decision that for him, at least for the next several years, love was an emotion he’d do well to avoid; marriage, therefore, did not presently feature on his horizon.

That decision ought to have settled his mind. Instead, he remained restless, dissatisfied. Not yet at peace with his direction.