"Only a few flowers to put in," said the good woman, "and the picture will be finished. I have watched it for weeks. How wonderful it is! Just her beautiful face and kind smile. And to think that there are people who pay hundreds of pounds to have their portrait painted! How lucky a lady is to be the wife of a painter--she can get hers for nothing!" She was interrupted in her reflections by a ring and a double knock at the studio door. Hobbs ran to answer the postman, and returned immediately, bearing in her hand a box from which some magnificent pansies were escaping. She had great difficulty in extracting the flowers from the badly crushed box. "Pansies," said she, "for the portrait, no doubt--models for copying. If I were the wife of a painter, that is the only kind of model I would allow my husband to paint from--nature. Fancy women coming to a studio and undressing before a man!--the hussies! I am glad there are no such creatures wanted here." It is necessary to be an artist, or at any rate of an artistic nature, to understand that it is possible to regard a perfectly nude model with as much _sang-froid_ and respect as one would a statue; but the English middle class have not the artistic nature; and, in the eyes of a good ordinary woman, a female model is a lost creature, and the artist who studies and draws her an abandoned man. England produces something very humorous: this is the prudish model, who comes to an artist's studio, refuses at first, hesitates long, and finally offers to pose in tights. Better still. A French painter in New York was doing the portrait of a beautiful American woman in evening dress. When the head and shoulders were finished, the pretty American declared that she was too busy to pose any longer, and suggested that the picture might be completed from a model of her own height and figure, who could wear her gown. The painter agreed, but had the greatest difficulty in finding a model who would consent to exhibit her charms, as the society lady of the United States had done freely and imperturbably. Hobbs did not let her indignation get the better of her, and, consoling herself with the thought that "the creatures" were not wanted here, finished dusting the studio, and then, gathering up the pansies, took them to her mistress. It was ten o'clock. Philip had not yet come to the studio. He usually began working at nine o'clock, and went on steadily until one, so as to profit fully by the best of the light that London puts at the disposition of an artist. Hobbs was astonished that her master was not yet at work, especially as she knew he had promised Dora to finish her portrait by the 10th of May. She herself had told her so. She began making conjectures, when a loud ringing at the studio door aroused her from her reverie. She returned in a few moments, followed by a young man about twenty-five, tall and distinguished-looking, with a pleasant face, whom she had often seen in the house.