At supper with Emmeline, which Jane was almost unable to eat, she said, when the maid had retired to the kitchen, ‘I am lost to Julietta Sims.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmeline calmly.

‘Irretrievably lost.’

‘Yes. I know this.’

‘Am I now in a play? A tragedy of some kind?’

Emmeline sipped her glass of white wine, regarding Jane tenderly over the top of the glass. After a long moment, she said, ‘we must finish the portrait. I think I know how to finish it now.’

‘I asked you if I was in a tragedy, Aunt Emmeline.’

‘And I said that I knew how to finish the portrait now – to put passion, not tragedy, into your features. But this may not take very long. Then, I think, you must return to Bath.’

‘You’re afraid I’ll make a scandal in your house?’

‘No. Not at all. I’m afraid that your heart will be broken. It’s known in a certain group in London society that Julietta …’

‘Has lovers?’

‘Women, in particular. I’ve heard them referred to as “Julietta’s beauties”. She never chooses ordinary-looking people. She chooses those whom she finds exceptional. I expect she was infatuated with you straight away, the moment she saw you.’

‘And I with her.’

‘But you must not stay to suffer, Jane. Now that you know a little more about your body and its pleasure, why do you not agree to marry your doctor in Bath? From what you say, he is an honourable man – and such creatures are rare in English society. Of course all men need to be taught about women’s sexual needs, because they have no concept of what they are, but they can learn to be very good lovers, too. Your doctor would soon learn. And you would have him in your bed every night.’

‘I don’t want him in my bed at all. I could never love him in that way.’

‘Of course you think that now. But I merely plant the idea in your mind.’

Jane was silent. She reflected that while she’d been making love with Julietta, she had experienced a kind of near-drowning in some dark element into which she had never before fallen. It was as though, during the two hours she and Julietta had spent in sexual abandon, the White Angel had vanished – vanished completely, with all her power and intelligence, to be replaced by someone else, someone who was no longer any kind of ‘angel’, whose mind was clouded, whose eyes were blind, whose hands had no skill, who yearned for nothing except her lover’s touch and who would surrender everything to lie in that deep ocean of pleasure.

But she realised that she did not at all admire this new person. Miss Jane had always carried her great height around with a manifest degree of self-congratulation. Now, she felt as though this tallness had been taken from her and that she had become small, so small that people might pass right by her and not notice her at all.