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I said, “you haven’t even started yet.” I’ve heard of folk doing some daft things on the rebound but joining the Civil Service had to be the daddy of them all. Life’s all we’ve got; signing it away is the only thing that ever really makes me angry.
    I marched through to the kitchen. A week or two before, Old Ardkinglas had had a spurt of Christian charity and presented me with a couple of bottles of Eiswein; the real stuff, none of your supermarket tractor fuel. I’d had them in the cooler since the morning. Itook one through with a couple of glasses, uncorked and poured. “This,” I said, “is the only drink for a perfect summer night. Think of the snow on the grapes.”
    She sipped, made a luxurious sound and lay back. “It’s like the songs,” she said dreamily. “Distant and delicate and cool.”
    I set the bottle down between us. We watched the mist form on it and start to trickle. Then she said, “It was kind of you this afternoon.”
    “What?”
    “Well, taking me out to start with. Then making the drawing. Me as the Nymph. I wouldn’t admit it but it bucked me up no end.”
    “You were the Nymph,” I said.
    “That’s silly.”
    “Any woman can be Coventina if she wants to,” I said. “That’s how she shows herself.” A grotesque and monstrous lie of course, but by God I uttered it with conviction. “I see her on my own too, sometimes,” I said. “But then of course I’m mad. It’s a great help in my work.”
    She shook her head, eyes closed. She said, “You’re the sanest man I know,”
    I topped her glass up, hastily. Couldn’t have Service Officials getting perceptive; where would we all be then? “I really am mad,” I said. “You just don’t realize. You’ve only scraped the surface.”
    She grinned, without opening her eyes. She said, “You like women, don’t you?”
    “I paint them,” I said modestly.
    She shook her head. She said, “M-mm, there’s more to it than that.” She sat up a bit, located the glass. “This really is gorgeous … Why didn’t you ever get married?”
    I didn’t answer at once, and she frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a bit private.”
    “Not private at all,” I said cheerfully. “No secrets from the State.” I took a slurp myself. She was right, it was superb. “I’d only have married the Nymph,” I said. “Nobody else would have done. So it wouldn’t have been fair.”
    “How do you mean?”
    I thought again for a moment.“Watching her get older,” I said. “Wondering how long I could go on loving her. This way’s better. I keep finding her all the time.”
    She said, “How strange. It’s rather lovely though. You are a fascinating man.” She set the glass down. She said, “Show me the painting again.”
    “Coventina?”
    “Please …”
    I’d lit a couple of candles. I moved one round. The Nymph emerged from gloom. The dim light made her eyes look bigger than ever, and dark. Netta said, “Did she honestly cause all that trouble?”
    “With the Controller? Yes, he was fearfully waxy.” I pointed. “He said if I’d been a proper artist I’d have put a little leafy branch across. Just there.”
    She giggled. She said, “Or dressed her in a blue serge suit.”
    “Yes, I suppose they’d like that. But there’d still be little erotic bumps.”
    She turned to stare at me. Her eyes were big and dark too. She said, “This girl, Amaryllis. Does she really look like that?”
    “A bit,” I said. “She was younger then of course.”
    She lit a cigarette, sat staring at the match. It nearly burned her fingers before she blew it out. She said, “Do you always work from models?”
    “Generally. Or photographs.”
    She said, “I thought that was cheating.”
    “Of course not. Leonardo would have used a camera if he’d had one handy. Canaletto did. You can tell by his perspective.”
    There was a pause. Had we been fencers, I would have said we’d reached the end of a phrase. I filled her