"Oh, plod along in the studio as usual. I have got a fine idea for a picture, and I am hunting for a model. The subject is a couple of lines of Keates's 'Belle Dame sans Merci,' and I want a girl with reddish-golden hair and a palish face; gleaming eyes, deep set; and cruel red lips—all curves. Not a fine bouncing wench at all, but one of those weird, fascinating, fragile sort of women—you know what I mean."
"But you surely don't expect to find exactly what you want?"
"Scarcely. But if I could only get the right coloured hair with the pale face it would be something. To tell the truth, Towning," the young artist avowed, with a moment's outburst of confidence," I haven't got as much imagination as an artist really wants. I don't get a clear vision of things in my mind; I just get a shadowy sort of notion. But unless I can have some degree of reality before me, very similar to my vague fancy—well, I am nowhere. My idea just dies away."
"Paint portraits. There's more money in that than in anything else, you know."
"Oh, that reminds me of a bit of real luck. When Lord Winborough returns to England in the autumn, he has promised to let me do a bust of him to exhibit. Splendid chance, isn't it? But I am awfully set on doing that 'Belle Dame' picture."
"Perhaps Miss Stornway knows of a girl with red-gold hair and all the rest of it. By the way, it's time."
He ceased working, and slightly nodded to Evarne. She stood up, stretched her arms over her head, gave a couple of tiny kicks to take the stiffness from one of her knees, then slipped behind the screen that formed a temporary dressing-room. She reappeared, clad in a loose crimson wrapper, and sat down by the fire.
The young men joined her.
"You heard what we were talking about, of course, Miss Stornway?" questioned Towning. "Is there a 'Belle Dame' among your friends?"
But Evarne was unable to render assistance. She knew of two models with red-gold hair, but the accompanying round, rosy faces and retroussé noses of both were in no way mystic and interesting. All she could do was to promise to remember the requirement, and to send any likely damsel along for inspection.