'I think you will make a pretty picture,' he replied with dignity. 'Come! ten rupees is a lot, you know.' 'I'll sit if the Huzoor thinks me pretty,' persisted Azîzan, now quite grave. And her gravity, as she sat with the reddish purple drapery veiling all save the straight column of her throat and the thin brown hands clasping the Ayôdhya pot, appealed so strongly to George Keene's artistic sense, that he would have perjured himself to say she was beautiful as a houri twenty times over if thereby he could have made her sit to him. She proved an excellent model; perhaps because she had done little else all her life but sit still, with that grave tired look on her face. So still, so lifeless, that he felt aggrieved when, without a word of warning, she rose and salaamed. 'I must go home now, Huzoor,' she said in answer to his impatient assertion that he had but just begun. 'I will come to-morrow if the Huzoor wishes it.' 'Of course you must come,' he replied angrily, 'if you are to get the ten rupees. Why can't you stay now?' Azîzan might have said with truth that a hand from the gateway behind the sketcher's back had beckoned to her, but she only smiled mysteriously. George, left behind in the sunny courtyard, looked at the charcoal smudges on his canvas with mixed feelings. He had the pose; but should he ever succeed in painting the picture which rose before his mind's eye? To most amateurs of real talent, such as he was, there comes some special time when the conviction that here is an opportunity, here an occasion for the best possible work, brings all latent power into action, and makes the effort absorbing. Something of this feeling had already taken possession of George; he began to project a finished picture, and various methods of inducing his sitter to give him more time. Perhaps she had found it dull. Native women, he believed, chattered all day long. So when she came next morning, he asked her if she liked stories, and when she nodded, he began straightway on his recollections of Hans Andersen; choosing out all the melancholy and aggressively sentimental subjects, so as to prevent her from smiling. He succeeded very well so far; Azîzan sat gravely in the sunshine listening, but every day she rose to go with just the same sudden alacrity. Then he told her the tale of Cinderella, and the necessity for her leaving the prince's ball before twelve o'clock; but even this did not make Azîzan laugh. On the contrary, she looked rather frightened, and asked what the prince said when he found out. 'He told her that he thought her the most beautiful girl in the world, so they lived happy ever after,' replied George carelessly. It was two nights after this incident that old Zainub the duenna paid a visit to Chândni in her shadowy recesses.