She had come to me in the regular course of
business to get work, accompanied by another young girl; her features
were not regular, but mobile and expressive, her eyes restless, and her
hair rebellious as it hung in brown wavelets over her forehead. Her
friend was a contrast--the regular blue-eyed maiden, fair-haired and
fair-skinned. I took their names and addresses, putting them down as
head models, for, in answer to my question whether they sat for the
figure, Laura had replied, "No; certainly not." It was the close of the
season, and I had much work to finish before I could leave town. I told
my visitors so, and returned to my easel, but they were evidently
disinclined to go; they looked around as if fascinated by the artistic
surroundings, and after a whispered consultation, they hinted, carefully
veiling their words, that they had no insuperable objection to
unveiling. It was evident that they were fired with lofty ambitions of
"the altogether" kind. (Immortal creation of my friend Du Maurier, that
word, _the altogether_, which lulls suspicion and alarm in the breast of
the Philistine, and checks the blush that would rise to the cheek of the
British matron.) I bluntly told my would-be models that I was working
against time, and that for some months to come I should not be able to
use them, whether in sections or as a whole. But they were not to be
dissuaded, once having made up their minds to qualify for _the
altogether_.

Befittingly coy and shy, Laura's friend emerged from the dressing-room,
the type of the English maiden, the rosebud of sweet seventeen. The milk
of human beauty flowed in her veins, tinting her with creamy whites from
head to foot; one only wanted some dove-coloured greys to model her
forms, till at the extremities one would put in a few touches of pink
madder or of Laque de garance rose doree. It is a beautiful little type,
"rosed from top to toe in flush of youth." Greuze could paint it, and
others too; but whenever I attempted it, I have found that I was not
good at rendering the girlish forms and the strawberry-and-cream colour.

Very different was Laura. She came into the room as if to the manner
born, freely and easily. She had seemed rather short of stature and
awkward in her movements. Now she was tall and graceful, and so
sculptural in form that at first you would scarcely notice her colour.
You could not render her dull bronze-like tints without mixing your
light-reds with cobalt blu