It was a large room, ideal for his purpose, with a big north-facing skylight, and a view from the front windows over the River Thames. He was working on a sketch of the river, with its constant traffic of barges and pleasure boats, but after a short while he threw down his pencil and turned away in a fit of despondency. It was not that the work itself displeased him. He knew that he was a skilled draughtsman. But who, he asked himself for the hundredth time, needed one more picture of the Thames, however perfect, or one more pretty watercolour of a rural scene? They added nothing to the sum total of human knowledge and there were more than enough already to decorate the walls of every house in the country. He looked round the room. The walls were covered in sketches and watercolours, some finished, others incomplete. He had tried his hand at portraiture, too, and stacked in one corner were several sketches of Leonora, each one abandoned because, no matter how hard he tried, at some stage they all began to look like Ralph.
