white as a flower.

"All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I
suppose you realise it!"

A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he
stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a
delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring
the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped
forward, shadowed by her hair.

"You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in
colour and form and texture."

She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash.

"Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go
about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers,
displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours--a multitude of figures
amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky.

"You're intelligent," he went on with animation,--"I saw that--somehow
or other--though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his
hand on the painted canvas beside him:

"You're a model, and it's not necessary to inform you that this Is only
a preliminary sketch. Your experience tells you that. But it is
necessary to tell you that it's the final composition. I've decided on
this arrangement for the ceiling: You see for yourself that you're
perfectly fitted to stand or sit for all these floating, drifting,