the picture
seemed to gather round, and centre in a sweet youthful face with the
blue stone earrings, hanging against the creamy neck, beside the
rounded cheek, and the cluster of red flowers bound on each temple
against the smooth black hair!

I settled myself lower in the deep roomy armchair, and pushed my feet
forward to the blazing fire. There was still half an hour before I
could decently ring for tea, and it was too dark already to work. I
had had a hard and disagreeable morning, too, and felt I needed rest
and quiet thought. How the red flame leapt in the grate, and what a
rich, warm, wine-dark colour it threw all round my red room! I rose
and drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows to shut out
their steely patches of grey that spoiled the harmony of colour. I
returned to my chair and glanced round with satisfaction. Fitted and
furnished and hung with every beautiful shade of red, my studio always
delighted and charmed my vision.

My friends said I had papered and furnished it in red to throw up the
white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do
with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better
advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was
not the prompting motive. Rather it was that in England where all is
so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround
myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, this warm inviting tint.

My eye in wandering from floor to ceiling rested finally on the empty
easel, the numerous white unused sheets of paper near it. I felt in
despair. Not even a sketch of a Phryne yet! Not even a model found!
Not even the idea of where to find one!

I had been seeing models all the morning, and how wearisome and
vexatious, and even, towards the end, how repulsive that becomes! The
wearying search after something that corresponds to the perfect ideal
in one's brain, the constant raising of hope and ensuing
disappointment as a misshapen foot or crooked knee destroys the effect
of neck and shoulder, produce at last an intolerable irritation. I had
dismissed them all finally, and they had trailed away in the rain, a
dismal procession of dark-clothed women.

A quarter of an hour of red stillness in that comfortable room had
passed, and the warmth and quiet of it had crept over me and into me,
gradually soothing away all vexations, when a knock came on the door
and in answer to my, "Come in," some one ente