I cannot finish this second picture. There remains something vacant at its heart. I paint a stove and a coal scuttle, a second, lower table, a lamp and a vase of flowers, yet the void persists. I begin to sense that neither of the women is central to the painting: whatever work of art they are creating seems somehow beyond their reach. The woman on the sofa leans her head back against her arm. She looks tired, as if she would like to relinquish her role of artist’s model and rest. The other woman stares at the fruit bowl as if its secret eludes her. Perhaps it is her husband, or son, who is the painter, and she is merely an accessory, required to serve tea to his guests. The expression in her eyes suggests that she is unhappy with her lot. Her rapt concentration intimates that she, too, might have been an artist, if only the setting had been different, if only the places had been reversed. In the end, I abandon the picture. I cannot bear to go on with it. Something in the women’s demeanor implies that I am responsible for their failure, that it is my task to alter their fate. Yet I scarcely know how.

There is a fireplace in the center, a window at one end, a small stove and washstand in a corner. I stack my parcels by the door and walk round the space. The bareness pleases me. Now that Angelica is away at school and I am on my own, I have decided to close up Charleston for part of each week and rent a studio in London near Duncan. I unwrap the first of my packages. It is one of Duncan’s paintings, a jug of the orange and lemon branches he brought back as a gift from North Africa. I stand it on the shelf above the fireplace. Already, the mood of the room changes. I walk round it again, planning. I will have a bed here, doubling as a divan during the day, and set my easel opposite the window. I will buy an old screen and decorate it to close off the stove and washstand from the rest of the space. I imagine dark red curtains, patterned with gold leaves, walls the color of cream. There is no chair so I lodge on the windowsill and pull out my pencil and sketchbook. Within seconds I am drawing, my pencil flying over the paper as I struggle to keep pace with my vision. I feel a familiar sense of immersion.