little scream.

“How horrid of him,” she cried. “Not the nude, Miss Erskine, surely?”

Jill stared.

“Well, at present,” she said, “he is drawing the human foot in outline, and it certainly hasn’t a stocking on.”

“But you don’t teach—that sort of thing, do you?”

“It is usually taught in Art Schools,” Jill answered frigidly. “So far as I am concerned I have only just commenced teaching. You do not wish to go in for the figure then?”

“Certainly not; flowers are my forte; I adore nature.”

Apparently she did not consider that the human form reckoned in this category, and certainly her own, thanks to the aid of the costumière, had deviated somewhat from the natural laws of contour; nevertheless nature is at the root of our being and no matter how we attempt to disguise and ignore the fact she will not be denied. It was on the tip of Jill’s tongue to remark that flowers alone did not constitute nature but she restrained herself, and endeavoured to check her increasing irritability.

“You are quite right not to go in for the figure,” she said; “feeling as you do about it nature becomes coarse, and artificiality—or shall we say the conventional customs of circumstances?—preferable. Will you come into the studio?”

It just flashed through her mind to wonder what this young lady whose modesty was only to be equalled by Isobel’s would say to the models when she saw them, and it must be confessed that the thought of them caused her a certain malicious satisfaction, but when she held aside the curtain for Miss Bolton to enter she perceived to her unspeakable astonishment that all the models had been carefully draped with the dust covers in which they were kept encased when not in use, and which she had herself taken off that morning, and had folded and placed on the shelf. She glanced towards St. John in wrathful indignation, but St. John was busy measuring the length of the big toe in the copy and comparing it with his own drawing, which, taking into consideration the fact that he was not supposed to be making an enlargement, was not altogether satisfactory.

“May I enquire,” asked Jill with 

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