It was a cold March day. The sun shone cheerfully through the drawn white blinds of the studio skylight, but an east wind blowing outside came in through the cracks and defied the blaze of the fire in the stove. “You are quite blue with cold,” said Winifred, laying down mahl-stick and palette. “Here, put on this wrap. Why don't you take more care of yourself?” “I never thought of it,” said Clytie, shivering a little and accepting contentedly the wrap and a caress. “I was sketching out quite a history of that boy who has just left.” Winifred drew a stool to Clytie's chair near the fire and took up her position upon it--a favourite one with her, as she could have both the moral solace of sitting at Clytie's feet, and the physical comfort of resting her head in Clytie's lap. “I hope he won't bring all kinds of horrible people into the house--burglars, you know, like Oliver Twist,” she added vaguely. “I suppose it is rather rash picking up a model out of the streets. But he is just the boy I wanted to give character to the group. I was going to paint in one out of my own head.” “I don't know how you get all those street types out of your head, Clytie. I wish I could do it.” “I would like to see you try, you silly child,” said Clytie, laughing. “Your street arabs would look like stray Cupids hastily huddled up in old clothes by a shocked and modest policeman!” “I did not mean that; you know I didn't. What I meant was--I wish I could paint without models. I don't think I could paint a common flat leaf without having it before me. As for painting that”--and she pointed to a basket standing by her easel, overflowing with anemones, snowdrops, and violets obtained that morning by Mr. Gurkins from Covent Garden--“without a copy, I might just as soon think of flying.” “You are an artist, Winnie, and love your art for its own sake. I am not quite so sure that I do, now. To have to finish all the thousand little convolutions of those bells would drive me raving mad. I should like to have a ghost as sculptors do, only mine would do the finishing and put in all the nuisance of detail. That's why I can get on without models. It saves time. I can bring home a face with me from the streets, and I can paint it in rapidly, and then I am done. I suppose I oughtn't to be, but Burrowes seems satisfied. He says he has got quite a 'line' in my pictures--the correct ones--and is thinking of raising the price. I am sure that man has been a linen-draper.” “If you could remember the boy's face why do you bring him here?” asked Winifred. “I only want to know why you want him so particularly, dear,” she added, raising her chin and looking upwards at Clytie. The boy had been ragged and uncared-for, not exactly a street urchin, but on a vague borderland of respectability, between the newspaper arab and the errand boy.--a hybrid with the vices of many strains.