Punctual to the minute came the young lady's rap at my door. I ushered her in. She was rather small; and self-possessed, very. In the cut of her serge frock and the line of her little hat over her eyebrows I fancied I saw a touch of the mother's nationality. With a most business-like air she removed this hat, carefully replacing the pins in the holes they had already traversed, took off her coat (it was February), and turned to the light. She would do. Evident and delightful fact! I at once informed her of it. She asked if she should sit that morning. I said that, as I had sketches to make before deciding on pose and effect of light, the sooner she would enter upon her professional duties the better.
The gown I had already discovered—a trouvaille and genuinely of the epoch; an enticing pink silk with glowing shadows.
Miss Jones made no comment on the exquisite thing which I laid lovingly on her arm. She retired with a brisk, calm step behind the tall screen in the corner.
When she reappeared in the dress, the old whites of the muslins at elbows and breast falling and folding on a skin like milk, I felt my heart rise in a devout ejaculation of utter contentment. The Manon of my dreams stood before me. The expression certainly was wanting; I should have to compass it by analogy. My imagination had grasped it, and I should realize the type by the aid of Miss Jones's pale face, narrowing to a chin the French would call mutin, her curled lips and curiously set eyes, wide apart, and the brows that swept ever so slightly upward. The very way in which her fair hair grew in a little peak on the forehead, and curved silky and unrippled to a small knot placed high, fulfilled my aspirations, though the hair must be powdered and in it the vibrating black of a bow.
Miss Jones stood very well, conscientiously and with intelligence. Pose and effect were soon decided upon, and in a day or two I was regularly at work, delighting in it, and with a sensation of power and certainty I had rarely experienced.
Carrington came in quite frequently, and, looking from my canvas to Miss Jones, would pronounce the drawing wonderfully felt.
"Dégas wouldn't be ashamed of the line of the neck," he said. "The turn and lift of her head as she looks sideways in the mirror is really émouvant, life; good idea; in character; centred on herself; not bent on conquest and staring it at you. Manon had not that trait."
Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most posée, well-behaved young person.
One could not call her manner discreet; it was far too self-confident for that. Her silence was natural, not assumed. During the rests she would return to a book.
I asked her one day what she was reading. She replied, looking up with polite calm: