"You know, very frilly musling. Just like a ballet skirt, only you needn't wear tights." "I didn't hear what you said. I know, tarlatan. Nice frizzy stuff. That sounds good. And it won't matter crumpling it?" "Of course not." "Because you see I want you to be lying on a pile of rugs and cushions just as if you'd been dancing hard and had fallen asleep where you sank down." So, in the time of celandines and snowdrops, Jenny would come to the studio every day; and when they had lunched together intimately and delightfully, she would go downstairs to change her frock, while Maurice arranged her resting-place. The dove-gray tarlatan skirt, resilient like the hair-spring of a watch, suited the poise of Jenny's figure. She wore gray silk stockings clocked with vivid pink, a _crepe de Chine_ blouse the color of mist, and round her head a fillet of rosy velvet. Altogether, she looked an Ariel woven magically from the smoke of London. Once or twice she actually fell fast asleep among the rugs; but generally she lay in a dream, just conscious of the flow of Maurice's comments and rhapsodies. "It's an extraordinary thing," he began on one occasion. "But as I sit here fashioning your body out of wax, you yourself become every moment more and more of a spirit. I've a queer fancy working in my brain all the time that this is really you, here under my hands. I suppose it's the perpetual concentration on one object that puts everything else out of proportion. One thing, however, I do realize: you're making yourself every day more necessary to my life. Honestly, when you're not here, this studio is infernal. You seem to endow it with your presence, to infuse it with your personality. It's so romantic, you and I all alone on the tops of the houses, more alone than if we were on a beach in winter. I wish I could tell you the glorious satisfaction I feel all the time." "Darling," she murmured drowsily. "Sleepy girl, are you?" "A bit." Just then came a knock at the door, and Ronnie Walker looked in. "Hullo, Ronnie," said Maurice, with a hint of ungraciousness in his tone. "I say, old chap, would you think me an intrusive scoundrel if I made some drawings of Jenny?" Maurice's annoyance at interruption was mollified by the pride of ownership. "Rather not. Any time. Why not now?" So Ronnie sat there, making little _croquis_ of Jenny with soft outlines elusive as herself. After a while, with his sketch-book under his arm, he stole quietly from the room. The next day he came back with two water-colors, of which the first showed a room shadowy with dawn and Jenny fast asleep before a silver mirror, wrapped in a cloak of clouded blue satin. The second represented a bedroom darkened by jalousies faintly luminous with the morning light, when through one chink, glittering with motes, a narrow sunbeam made vivid her crimson lips. The painter showed his pictures to Maurice. "Oh, Ronnie," said the latter. "You put me out of temper with my own work."