‘It needn’t show if the drape is suspended a little,’ said Troy. ‘From the back of the bench, for instance. Then as she falls down she would carry the drape with her. Anyway, the probabilities are none of your business. You’re not doing a “before and after”, like a strip advertisement, are you?’

‘I can’t get the pose,’ said Malmsley languidly. ‘I want to treat it rather elaborately. Deliberately mannered.’

‘Well, you can’t go in for the fancy touches until you’ve got the flesh and blood to work from. That pose will do us as well as another, I dare say. I’ll try it. You’d better make a separate drawing as a study.’

‘Yes, I suppose I had,’ drawled Malmsley. ‘Thanks most frightfully.’

‘Of course,’ Valmai Seacliff was saying, ‘I went down rather well in Italy. The Italians go mad when they see a good blonde. They used to murmur when I passed them in the streets. “Bella” and “Bellissima”. It was rather fun.’

‘Is that Italian?’ asked Katti morosely, of her flake-white.

‘It means beautiful, darling,’ answered Miss Seacliff.

‘Oh hell!’ said Sonia, the model.

‘Well,’ said Troy loudly. ‘I’ll set the pose.’

They all turned to watch her. She stepped on the throne, which was the usual dais on wheels, and began to arrange a seat for the model. She threw a cerise cushion down, and then from a chest by the wall she got a long blue length of silk. One end of this drape she threw across the cushion and pinned, the other she gathered carefully in her hands, drew round to one side, and then pinned the folds to the floor of the dais.

‘Now, Sonia,’ she said. ‘Something like this.’

Keeping away from the drape, Troy knelt and then slid sideways into a twisted recumbent pose on the floor. The right hip was raised, the left took the weight of the pose. The torso was turned upwards from the waist so that both shoulders touched the boards. Sonia, noticing that twist, grimaced disagreeably.

‘Get into it,’ said Troy, and stood up. ‘Only you lie across the drape with your head on the cushions. Lie on your left side, first.’

Sonia slid out of the white kimono. She was a most beautiful little creature, long-legged, delicately formed and sharp-breasted. Her black hair was drawn tightly back from the suave forehead. The bony structure of her face was sharply defined, and suggested a Slavonic mask.

‘You little devil, you’ve been sunbathing,’ said Troy. ‘Look at those patches.’

‘Well they don’t like nudism, at Bournemouth,’ said Sonia.

She lay across the drape on her left side, her head on the cerise cushion. Troy pushed her right shoulder over until it touched the floor. The drape was pressed down by the shoulders and broke into uneven blue folds about the body.

‘That’s your pose, Malmsley,’ said Troy. ‘Try it from where you are.’