"I could wear my practice dress."
"What's that like?"
"I've got two or three. Only the nicest is my gray tarlington."
"You know, very frilly musling. Just like a ballet skirt, only you needn't wear tights."
"I didn't hear what you said. I know, tarlatan. Nice frizzy stuff. That sounds good. And it won't matter crumpling it?"
"Of course not."
"Because you see I want you to be lying on a pile of rugs and cushions just as if you'd been dancing hard and had fallen asleep where you sank down."
So, in the time of celandines and snowdrops, Jenny would come to the studio every day; and when they had lunched together intimately and delightfully, she would go downstairs to change her frock, while Maurice arranged her resting-place.
The dove-gray tarlatan skirt, resilient like the hair-spring of a watch, suited the poise of Jenny's figure. She wore gray silk stockings clocked with vivid pink, a crêpe de Chine blouse the color of mist, and round her head a fillet of rosy velvet. Altogether, she looked an Ariel woven magically from the smoke of London. Once or twice she actually fell fast asleep among the rugs; but generally she lay in a dream, just conscious of the flow of Maurice's comments and rhapsodies.