I settled myself lower in the deep roomy armchair, and pushed my feet forward to the blazing fire.  There was still half an hour before I could decently ring for tea, and it was too dark already to work.  I had had a hard and disagreeable morning, too, and felt I needed rest and quiet thought.  How the red flame leapt in the grate, and what a rich, warm, wine-dark colour it threw all round my red room!  I rose and drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows to shut out their steely patches of grey that spoiled the harmony of colour.  I returned to my chair and glanced round with satisfaction.  Fitted and furnished and hung with every beautiful shade of red, my studio always delighted and charmed my vision.

My friends said I had papered and furnished it in red to throw up the white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was not the prompting motive.  Rather it was that in England where all is so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, this warm inviting tint.

My eye in wandering from floor to ceiling rested finally on the empty easel, the numerous white unused sheets of paper near it.  I felt in despair.  Not even a sketch of a Phryne yet!  Not even a model found!  Not even the idea of where to find one!

I had been seeing models all the morning, and how wearisome and vexatious, and even, towards the end, how repulsive that becomes!  The wearying search after something that corresponds to the perfect ideal in one’s brain, the constant raising of hope and ensuing disappointment as a misshapen foot or crooked knee destroys the effect of neck and shoulder, produce at last an intolerable irritation.  I had dismissed them all finally, and they had trailed away in the rain, a dismal procession of dark-clothed women.

A quarter of an hour of red stillness in that comfortable room had passed, and the warmth and quiet of it had crept over me and into me, gradually soothing away all vexations, when a knock came on the door and in answer to my, “Come in,” some one entered the room behind me.

“I am so glad to find you.”

I started to my feet at the sound of the soft voice, and went forward to the door.

“Viola! how good of you to come.”  I took both her hands and drew her into the firelight which sparkled gratefully on her tall slender figure and the fair waves of hair under her velvet hat.

“May I stay and have tea with you?  I have shopping all the afternoon and as I was driving past I thought I would see if you were in and disengaged.”

“I shall be delighted,” I said as I wheeled another armchair up to the fire.

“You are sure?  You have nothing else to do?”

“Nothing, really nothing,” I said, walking to the electric lights and switching them on; “and if I had, I would leave it all to have tea with you.”