I got no answer for a minute.  Veronica looked down and began to pull at the faded fringe of an old cushion.

At last I repeated my question.

“Not while she’s here,” she muttered in a low, fierce tone.

I was surprised at the resentment in look and voice.

“Nonsense,” I said with some annoyance.  “You can pose before her as well as before me.”

Veronica did not answer, only pulled in sullen silence at the cushion.

“You are wasting my time,” I said impatiently.

Veronica looked through the window.

“I shan’t take off my clothes before her,” she muttered defiantly.

I turned away from her in annoyance and approached Viola who had not moved from her chair on the other side of the room.  She sprang up and came to meet me.

“She objects to my being here?” she said quickly.  “Is it bothering you?  Because, if it is, I’ll go; that’ll settle it.”

“It’s awfully stupid.  I’m so sorry, Viola; it’s so idiotic of her.”

Viola smiled brightly up at me.

“Never mind, I’ll go.  You’ll be down soon, now.”

I held the door open for her, and with a smiling nod at me she passed through and went down the stairs.  I waited till her bright head had disappeared, and then closed the door and went back to Veronica.

“Now,” I said, “Mrs. Lonsdale has left us.  Will you get up and stand as I want you to?  Or do you want me to dismiss you?”

I felt extremely angry and annoyed.  My heart beat violently.  Viola had come there by my invitation, she had deprived herself of any possible society for the afternoon, and now had been practically turned out by this impertinent little model.

Veronica got sulkily up from the couch and began to undress in silence.

I walked away and flung myself into the armchair Viola had vacated, and picked up the charcoal sketch.

How sweet the face was in that!  And yet what an awful little devil the girl on the couch had looked.

I was so accustomed to Viola’s unfailing either good temper or self-command, that I was beginning to forget women had bad tempers as well as men.

After a minute or two Veronica came over to me; she had let her hair down, and it fell prettily on her shoulders.  I laid down the charcoal sketches and looked at her critically as she approached.

Her figure had all the beauty of great plumpness and youthfulness.  Every contour was round and full, and yet firm.  Her body was beautiful in the sense that all healthy, sound, young, well-formed things are, but there was, as it were, no soul in the beauty, nothing transcendent in any of the lines or in the colour.  It was something essentially of earth, un-dreamlike, appealing to the senses, and to them alone.

I was struck with the great contrast it presented to the form of Viola, which was so wonderfully ethereal, so divine in colour and design.  Every line in it was long and tapering, never coming to a sudden stop, but merging with infinite grace into the next, and the dazzling, immaculate whiteness of it all made it seem like something of heaven.  It suggested the vision, the ideal, all that man longs after with his soul, that stirs the celestial fires within his brain, not merely the flame of the senses.