He told her about Calthrop and the Paris Café, and Maurice Birnbaum and his motor-car and richly furnished flat in Westminster, and a Lord's son who was at the Detmold, and Mitchell, whose father was a great man. And all the time, as he talked, he was astonished at the sound of his own voice, so different did it sound. Hetty wriggled with pleasure in her chair and pouted up her lips. Presently she said her hat made her head ache, and she took it off and stretched out her arms and said:-- "No more pots and pans for me! I do think you're lovely. It's just like a story. I call that real fun. Not like Margate. . . . Do you think I could get work as a model, or do you have to be slap-up?" Mendel thought of the drabs who posed and he could not help smiling. "I could only tell by your figure, though your face is all right." "Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked. "Very." "I'll show you my figure, if you like." "All right, I'll light the gas-stove in the bedroom. It's a little cold in here." He showed her into the bedroom, and when she was ready she called to him. She was beautifully made, but she looked so foolish with her anxiety to please him that he could take hardly any interest in her, and he was distressed, too, because the only background he could give her consisted of his new knavish thoughts of the wealth of London. Yet nothing could disturb it, for the background was suitable. Her white body was her offering. "How much would I be paid?" "A shilling an hour." "Do you pay that?" "Yes." "If you could get me work I would sit to you for nothing." "I'd pay you," he said. His generous qualities strove hard to reassert themselves, but there was something about this girl that compelled just what he was giving her--hardness for hardness, value for value. Yet she was certainly beautiful, and it was strange to him to be unable to give her the warm homage that within himself he could not help feeling. She sat on the bed, making no move to cover herself, and said:-- "Artists _are_ different. There was an artist once at Margate. It was him put the idea into my head. But he was very poor and not a gentleman."