o awfully kind to me this morning," Lady
Adela continued. "I have arrived at some very dramatic scenes in my new
story, and she has been good enough to act as my model; I want to have
everything as vivid as possible; and why shouldn't a writer have a model
as well as a painter; I hope to have all the attitudes strictly
correct--to describe even the tone of her shriek when she comes upon the
dead body of her brother. Imagination first, then actuality of detail;
Rose tells me that Mr. Mellord, after he has finished a portrait, won't
put in a blade of grass or a roseleaf without having it before him. If
there's to be a crust of bread on the table, he must have the crust of
bread."

"Yes, but Mr. Moore," said Miss Georgie, coming suddenly back from the
window--and she was blushing furiously, up to the roots of her pretty
golden-red hair, and covertly laughing at the same time, "my difficulty
is that I try to do my best as the woman who unexpectedly sees her dead
brother before her; but I've got nothing to come and go on. I never saw
a dead body in my life; and it would hardly do to try it with a real
dead body--"

"Georgie, don't be horrid!" Lady Adela said, severely. "Here is Mr.
Moore, who can tell you how high the hands should be held, and whether
they should be clenched or open."

"Well, Lady Adela," he said, in his confusion (for he was in mortal
terror lest she should ask him to get up and posture before her), "the
fact is that on the stage there are so many ways of expressing fear or
dismay that no two people would probably adopt the same gestures. Would
you have her hands above her head? Wouldn't it be more natural for her
to have them about the height of her shoulders--the elbows drawn tightly
back--her palms uplifted as if to shut away the terrible sight?--"

"Yes, yes!" said Lady Adela, eagerly; and she quickly scribbled some
notes on the paper before her. "The very thing!--the very thing!"

"But don't you think," he ventured to say, "that that would look rather
mechanical--rather stagey, in fact? I know nothing about writing; but I
should think you would want to deal mostly with the expression of the
woman's face--"

"I want to have it all!" the anxious authoress exclaimed. "I want to
have attitudes--gestures--everything; to make the picture vivid. I must
have the actual tone of her shriek--"

"Which Mr. Moore heard as he came in," Miss Georgie said, as a kind of
challenge.

"Yes, I thought I heard a s