or rather cabins, on the
right, through which Laura led me. Cabin the first contained a dining
table and a fossil piano utilised as shelf for sundries and sideboard;
cabin the second, apparently a sleeping chamber, held a bed, dressing
table, and a diminutive bracket on which might have stood a hand basin;
while cabin the third--little more than a wooden box papered with
promiscuous remnants of a decorator's stock--stored a plank upraised by
volunteer legs enlisted from haphazard sources, a basin, a bottle of
cloudy water, and a cracked wall mirror.

There Laura slipped off her walking shoes, and announced her intention
to make a change of toilette.

I forthwith escaped through the further door, and found myself in a
large, bare room, facing a middle-aged man, who was evidently the
dancing master, M. Dupres.

I explained my presence and my interest in the ballet.

"I am accompanying my cousin, Miss Lorimer"--this was the stage name by
which she was known--"in order to paint the pose of one of my sitters. I
want more vibrating actuality, and hope to sketch it here."

"Mais certainement--of course. Ze beauty of ze human form is never so
fine as when it moves to my vish. You vill see."

Laura entered in a short, fan-pleated frock with black silk
knickerbockers, and lacy frills shrouding the knees. Her silken hose and
shiny pumps make her already graceful as she chassed by way of
experiment across the bare boards from the orange-toothed piano at one
end to the camp chairs at the other. The ballet-master made his way to a
small conservatory--a hospital for effete bulbs and straggling, deformed
geraniums--and snatching up a watering-can laid the dust which already
began to thicken the air.

Then operations began. To me they were deeply interesting, because
Betty's face and form were continually before my eyes, and the one thing
wanting to make my work a chef-d'oeuvre was, I hoped, on the verge of
discovery. Laura placed herself in an attitude, glanced at her
instructor, who had armed himself with a fiddle, and with its first
tones commenced a series of evolutions. Sketch-book in hand, I followed
her movements, now noting a six-step shuffle straight a-down the length
of the boards; now sketching the action of her arms, which, balancing
that of the feet, swayed inversely with every bend of the knees. Then
came an etherealised milkmaid step that might have been termed an arm
akimbo gallop had not the two wrists been pre