I arrived at about twelve, having had lunch at a chop-house nearby, and as I approached the house I saw a small cluster of people lingering at the gate as if unsure of their welcome. I recognized Holy Hunt and Morris, scowling fiercely at some remark of Hunt’s-the woman with him was Mrs Morris: I’d have recognized her from Rossetti’s paintings any day, but personally I found her rather too much on the grand scale for my taste. Henry would be pleased, though, as long as he didn’t have to talk to them: he couldn’t abide anyone eccentric or abrupt-and from what I had heard of Morris, he wasn’t the type to suffer a pompous ass like Henry very kindly.

There were a couple of my friends arriving in the wake of the little party, and I joined them, wondering all the while why they should have bothered to come in the first place. He was a young wretch of a poet called Finglass, she his Muse, Jenny; I grinned to hear him introduce her to the tight-lipped old biddy of a housekeeper as ‘Mrs Finglass’-the housekeeper managed to look sceptical and polite at the same time-and we went in together.

As I entered the house it occurred to me how typical of Henry Chester it was to set up an exhibition à domicile just after his wife, by all reports, had been so ill. I am certain that he would have been most affronted if anyone had pointed it out. I knew what Henry was like: all his ex-models agreed, although he paid quite well, he was a ‘regular Tartar’ when he was painting, he fell into the most violent rages if a girl as much as shifted her posture, he forgot to allow his models to take a rest, and, on top of that, moralized most harshly to the unfortunate creatures-most of whom were on the street through no real fault of their own, and had turned to modelling as a rather better-paid and more respectable form of prostitution.

There were maybe a dozen people in all; some peering at the framed canvasses in the passageway, but most of them in the parlour, where the bulk of the work was exhibited, with Henry in their midst talking volubly to a rapt little circle of nonentities over glasses of sherry and ratafia. He glanced at me as I came in and acknowledged me with a curt little nod. I smiled winningly, helped myself to a glass of sherry and idled over to the paintings, which were every bit as bad as I expected them to be.

The man had no fire: his paintings were wan, limp and horribly whimsical, with the sentimentality of his commonplace soul as evident as his lack of passion. Oh, he could paint, I suppose, and the model I acknowledged to be interesting enough, but sadly lacking in colour. She was obviously his favourite, because her face stared out at me from almost all the frames. She was an odd little thing, far removed from modern standards of beauty, but with a certain mediaeval look in her childish figure and loose, pale hair. A favourite niece, perhaps? I scanned the titles inscribed on the frames: Juliet in the Tomb, Nausicaa, The Little Beggar Girl, The Cold Wedding…No wonder the girl looked so mournful: every canvas showed her in some macabre, gloomy role…dying, dead, sick, blind, abandoned…thin and piteous as a dead child, swathed in her winding-sheet as Juliet, in rags as the beggar girl, lost and frightened-looking in rich silks and velvet as Persephone.

I was roused from my critical reverie by the door opening, and was astonished to see the girl herself come into the room. I recognized her features, but Henry hadn’t done her justice by a long way. She was a delightful wraith of a thing, like a silver birch, with the sweetest slim waist, long delicate hands with pointed fingernails and a mouth that only needed a kiss to make it burst into bloom. She was demurely dressed in grey flannel and looked barely out of her teens. I supposed that she was the niece, or even some professional model he had picked up. The thought of Mrs Chester was far from my mind at that moment and it was in all innocence that I greeted the Stunner:

‘My name’s Mose Harper. How do you do?’

She blushed and murmured something, looking around with those big, hunted eyes as if afraid to be seen with me. Maybe Henry had warned her about me. I smiled.

‘Henry should never have tried to paint you,’ I said. ‘I find it’s always a mistake to try to improve on Nature. May I ask your name?’

Another sideways glance at Henry, still absorbed in conversation.

‘Effie Chester. I’m…’ The nervous glance again.

‘A relation of friend Henry? How interesting. Not the sober side of the family, I hope?’

Again the glance. The Stunner resolutely put down her head and mumbled, not at all coyly. I realized that I had really embarrassed her and, detecting a soupçon of the bluestocking, changed my tack.

‘I’m a great admirer of Henry’s work,’ I lied valiantly. ‘You might say I was a colleague…a disciple of his.’

The violet eyes flickered for an instant, with amusement or scorn. ‘Is that true?’

Confound the minx, she was laughing at me! The light in those eyes was definitely laughter, and suddenly her face was illuminated, irrepressibly. I grinned.

‘No, it isn’t true. Are you disappointed?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s his style I dislike. I have no fault to find with the raw material. Poor Henry is a painter, not an artist. Give him a nice, ripe apple and he’ll put it against a silk screen and try to paint it. A pointless waste. Neither the apple nor the public appreciates the gesture.’

She was puzzled, but intrigued; and she had stopped looking at Henry every time she spoke.

‘Well? What would you do?’ she ventured.

‘Me? I think that to paint from life you have to know life. Apples are for eating, not for painting.’ I winked slyly and grinned at her. ‘And lovely young girls are like apples.’

‘Oh!’ She clapped her hands to her mouth and her eyes left mine and flew to Chester who had just discovered Holman Hunt among his guests and was engaged in earnest, pedantic conversation. She turned away, almost panic-stricken. No, she was not a flirt: far from it. I took her arm, gently turning her back towards me.

‘I’m sorry. I was only funning. I shan’t tease you again.’ She looked into my face to see if I was telling the truth. ‘I’d say “on my honour”, but I don’t have any,’ I said. ‘Henry should have warned you against me. Did he?’

She shook her head dumbly, entirely withdrawn.

‘No, I don’t suppose he did. Tell me, how do you like modelling? Does Henry share you with any of his friends, I wonder? No? Wise Henry. Oh, what’s the matter now?’ She had turned away again, and I read a deep, sincere distress in her face.

Her hands clenched the soft fabric of her gown, and her voice was low and violent. ‘Please, Mr Harper…’

‘What is it?’ I was caught between irritation and concern.

‘Please don’t talk about modelling! Don’t talk about the wretched paintings. Everyone asks about the paintings. I hate them!’

This was getting interesting. I lowered my voice, conspiratorially. ‘Actually, so do I.’

She gave an involuntary chuckle, and the stricken look went out of her eyes. ‘I hate having to play the same part every day,’ she went on, almost dreamily. ‘Always to be good, and quiet, to do my embroidery and sit in attractive poses, when inside I want to…’ She broke off again, perhaps realizing that she was about to pass the bounds of propriety.

‘But he must pay you quite well,’ I suggested.

‘Money!’ Her scorn was evident, and I dismissed any notion of her being a professional.

‘I wish I had your healthy disregard for it,’ I said lightly. ‘Or, at least, that my creditors did.’

She chuckled again.

‘Yes, but you’re a man,’ she said, sobering abruptly. ‘You can do what you like. You don’t…’ Her voice trailed off miserably.

‘And what would you like?’ I asked.

For a second she looked at me, and I almost saw something in her expression…like the promise of a bleak passion. Then, nothing. The wan look returned to her face.