While the little man had been saying this, he had been arranging the robe to make it hang well, tucking it in at my feet. “The shoes mustn’t show, you know,” he said, as he stooped like a little bootblack and arranged my train; then he shifted my stance until he had me close to the balustrade, for only there could he get the light falling full on my upturned face. One couldn’t help falling in with his fancy—it was infectious. I rolled up my sleeves so that now, as I stood looking into the sun, I confess I could not help feeling the part. I forgot all about my old spider, Mr. Mycroft. I was one with nature, transformed by the robe which covered every sign of the civilized man on me, and by my setting. Mr. Hess darted back to the other side of the arch, up which we had come, and began—I could see out of the corner of my upturned eye—to focus his camera.

And then he seemed to spoil it all. After some delay he became uncertain. Finally, he came back up to me. “It’s magnificent. I’ve never had the chance to take such a photo. But that’s what so often happens with really great opportunities and insights into art and high beauty, isn’t it?”

I was more than a little dashed. “Do you mean that you have decided not to take the photo?” I asked. Perhaps there was a touch of resentment in my voice. After all, I had been to a great deal of inconvenience; I had lent myself to a very unusual amount of free model work and laid myself open to Mr. Mycroft’s wry humor which would be all the more pointed if the photo was never taken.

“No—Oh, of course not!” But the tone had so much reservation in it that I was not in the slightest reassured, and even less so when he showed his hand, for then I was certain he had just thought up a none-too-unclever way of getting out of the whole business. “But as I’ve said, and as I know you know, whenever one glimpses a true summit of beauty one catches sight of something even more remarkable beyond.”

I snapped out, “Am I to presume that on reconsideration you would prefer not a high light but a foil, not myself but my old sober friend down by the gate?”

I had been growing quite resentful. But my resentment changed to outrage at the absurdity of his answer. It was a simple “Yes.” Then seeing me flush, he hurriedly added, “I do believe that majestic old figure would make a perfect foil to yours.”