Oh they were determined not to do this, and their touching patience
was the measure of their great need. They would sit by the hour,
uncomplaining, till I was ready to use them; they would come back
on the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if it
failed. I used to go to the door with them to see in what
magnificent order they retreated. I tried to find other employment
for them--I introduced them to several artists. But they didn't
"take," for reasons I could appreciate, and I became rather
anxiously aware that after such disappointments they fell back upon
me with a heavier weight. They did me the honour to think me most
their form. They weren't romantic enough for the painters, and in
those days there were few serious workers in black-and-white.

Besides, they had an eye to the great job I had mentioned to them--
they had secretly set their hearts on supplying the right essence
for my pictorial vindication of our fine novelist. They knew that
for this undertaking I should want no costume--effects, none of the
frippery of past ages--that it was a case in which everything would
be contemporary and satirical and presumably genteel. If I could
work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour
would of course be long and the occupation steady.

One day Mrs. Monarch came without her husband--she explained his
absence by his having had to go to the City. While she sat there
in her usual relaxed majesty there came at the door a knock which I
immediately recognised as the subdued appeal of a model out of
work. It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I at
once saw to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian
acquainted with no English word but my name, which he uttered in a