Flamby hugged her knees tightly and gazed at the speaker as if fascinated. She was endeavouring to readjust her perspective. Vanity in women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, like ghawâzi in a Keneh bazaar, in return for the odious distinction of knowing their charms to be "immortalised" by the brush of Orlando James? These were beyond Flamby's powers of comprehension.
"But Lady Daphne is an exception. I am only surprised that she did not want a pose which rendered her immediately recognisable."
"She did," drawled James, "but I didn't."
"Was she really an ideal model or did you induce her to pose just to please your colossal vanity?"
"My dear Flamby, it is next to impossible to find a flawless model among the professionals. Hammett or anybody will tell you the same. They lack that ideal delicacy, what Crozier calls 'the texture of nobility,' which one finds in a woman of good family. Half the success of my big subjects has been due to my models. This will be recognised when the history of modern art comes to be written. I am held up at the moment, and that is the reason why I am anxious to start on Keats."
"What is holding you up?"
"My model for The Circassian has jibbed. Otherwise it would be finished."
"There are disadvantages attaching to your method after all?"
"Yes. I shall avoid married models in future. Husbands are so inartistic."
"You don't want me to believe that some misguided married woman has been posing for The Circassian?"