My bedroom opened out of the studio by a small door, before which I generally had a red and gold Japanese screen.  I went in and switched on the light and began to dress, trying to get away from my crowding thoughts.

The temptation to accept Viola’s suggestion was the greater because she was so absolutely free and mistress of her own actions.

If she chose of her own free will to do any particular thing there was practically no one else to be consulted and no one to trouble her with reproof or reproaches.

Early left an orphan and in possession of a small fortune in her own right, she had been brought up by an old aunt who simply worshipped her and never questioned nor allowed to be questioned anything which Viola did.

She had given her niece an elaborate education, believing that a girl’s mental training should be as severe as a boy’s, and Viola knew her Greek and Latin and mathematics better than I knew mine, though all these had lately given way to the study of music, for which she had a great and peculiar gift.

The old lady was delighted when she found her favourite niece was really one of the children of the gods, as she put it, and henceforth Viola’s life was left still more unrestrained.

“She has genius, Trevor,” she would say to me, “just as you have, and we ordinary people can’t profess to guide or control those who in reality are so much greater than we are.  I leave Viola to judge for herself about life, I always have since she was quite a little thing, and I have no fear for her.  Whatever she does I know it will always be right.”

Viola was just twenty, but this kind of training had given her an intelligence and developed her intellect far beyond her years.

In her outlook upon life she was more like a man than a woman, and, never having been to school nor mixed much with other girls of her own age, she was free from all those small, petty habits of mind, that littleness of mental vision that so mars and dwarfs the ordinary feminine character.

In this question of posing for the picture, to take her face also would, of course, be quite impossible, but I had my own ideal for the Phryne’s face, nor was that important.

That the figure should be something of unusual beauty, something peculiarly distinctive seemed to me a necessity.  For the form of the Grecian Phryne had, by the mere force of its perfect and triumphant beauty, swept away the reason of all that circle of grey-bearded hostile judges called upon to condemn it, had carved for itself a place in history for ever.  There should in its presentment be something peculiarly arresting and enchanting, or the artistic idea, the spirit of the picture, would be lost.