d he went to the camera. I succeeded in partly twisting my head round.
'Are you _mad_?' I cried indignantly; 'do you really suppose I shall
consent to go down to posterity in such a position as this?'

I heard a click, and, to my unspeakable horror, saw that he was
deliberately covering me from behind the camera with a revolver--_that_
was what I had seen bulging inside his pocket.

'I should be sorry to slay any sitter in cold blood,' he said, 'but I
must tell you solemnly, that unless you instantly resume your original
pose--which was charming--you are a dead man!'

Not till then did I realise the awful truth--I was locked up alone, at
the top of a house, in a quiet neighbourhood, with a mad photographer!
Summoning to my aid all my presence of mind, I resumed the original pose
for the space of forty-five hours--they were seconds really, but they
_seemed_ hours; it was not needful for him to exhort me to be limp
again--I was limper than the dampest towel!

'Thank you very much,' he said gravely as he covered the lens; 'I think
that will come out very well indeed. You may move now.'

I rose, puffing, but perfectly collected. 'Ha-ha,' I laughed in a sickly
manner (for I _felt_ sick), 'I--I perceive, sir, that you are a
humorist.'

'Since I have abandoned poetry,' he said as he carefully removed the
negative to a dark place, 'I have developed a considerable sense of
quiet humour. You will find a large Gainsborough hat in that
corner--might I trouble you to put it on for the next sitting?'

'Never!' I cried, thoroughly revolted. 'Surely, with your rare artistic
perception, you must be aware that such a headdress as that (which is no
longer worn even by females) is out of all keeping with my physiognomy.
I will _not_ sit for my photograph in such a preposterous thing!'

'I shall count ten very slowly,' he replied pensively, 'and if by the
time I have finished you are not seated on the back of that chair, your
feet crossed so as to overlap, your right thumb in the corner of your
mouth, a pleasant smile on your countenance, _and_ the Gainsborough hat
on your head, you will need no more hats on this sorrowful earth.
One--two----'

I was perched on that chair in the prescribed attitude long before he
had got to seven! How can I describe what it cost me to smile, as I sat
there under the dry blue light, the perspiration rolling in beads down
my cheeks, exposed to the gleaming muzzle of the revolver, and the
steady Gorg