pewriting machine. There was a strange idle rhythm
in her walk as she crossed the office, and Rodney, as he stood watching
her, divined long tapering legs and a sinuous back. He did not know
what her face was like. Before she had time to turn round, Mr. Lawrence
had called him into his office, and he had been let out by a private
door. Rodney had been dreaming of a good model, of the true proportions
and delicate articulations that in Paris and Italy are knocking at your
door all day, and this was the very model he wanted for his girl
feeding chickens and for his Virgin, and he thought of several other
things he might do from her. But he might as well wish for a star out
of heaven, for if he were to ask that girl to sit to him she would
probably scream with horror; she would run to her confessor, and the
clergy would be up in arms. Rodney had put the girl out of his head,
and had gone on with his design for an altar. But luck had followed him
for this long while, and a few days afterwards he had met the pretty
clerk in a tea-room. He had not seen her face before, and he did not
know who it was until she turned to go, and as she was paying for her
tea at the desk he asked her if Mr. Lawrence were in town. He could see
that she was pleased at being spoken to. Her eyes were alert, and she
told him that she knew he was doing altars for Father McCabe, and
Father McCabe was a cousin of hers, and her father had a
cheese-monger's shop, and their back windows overlooked the mews in
which Rodney had his studio.

"How late you work! Sometimes your light does not go out until twelve
o'clock at night."

Henceforth he met her at tea in the afternoons, and they went to the
museum together, and she promised to try to get leave from her father
and mother to sit to him for a bust. But she could only sit to him for
an hour or two before she went to Mr. Lawrence, and Rodney said that
she would be doing him an extraordinary favour if she would get up some
hours earlier and sit to him from eight till ten. It was amusing to do
the bust, but the bust was only a pretext. What he wanted her to do was
to sit for the nude, and he could not help trying to persuade her,
though he did not believe for a moment that he would succeed. He took
her to the museum and he showed her the nude, and told her how great
ladies sat for painters in the old times. He prepared the way very
carefully, and when the bust was finished he told her suddenly that he
must