The posture was restful, though after twenty minutes, Michael’s arm began to tingle. The only sounds in the room were the soft scratch of charcoal or pencil against paper, the occasional cough, or one page being set aside so another could be begun.

The instructor, a fussy old Frenchman with a meticulous eye for detail, made an occasional murmured comment, and time drifted along in a peaceful trickle of moments.

“And now, mes prodiges, we draw more than the fingers and the toes,” Monsieur Berthold said. “We have noted before the regularities of our model’s features, the nobility of the brow, the fine angle of the chin, the lovely musculature, and the perfect symmetry of the dark brows. This man is quite attractive.” Monsieur’s remarks, while flattering, might have been describing a marble effigy, so dispassionate was his praise. “Now I pose him thus…”

Berthold demonstrated for Michael a sitting posture, one elbow braced on a thigh, gaze on the floor.

“Now, the handsome face is hidden. Draw this man so that without seeing his eyes, without knowing the set of his mouth, or the angle of his nose, he conveys merriment. He is about to spring up and give a shout of joy, to laugh with great glee.”

Michael, staring at his feet—scrupulously clean, second toe longer than the great toe—could not see the consternation in the room, but he could feel it in the silence that greeted Monsieur’s challenge. Monsieur had a whole speech about the difference between an artist and a draftsman. The draftsman rendered accurate likenesses and could make a fine living doing so.

The artist put truth on the page, the whole truth. The visual truth, the emotional truth, the moral truth. All a bit high flown when the audience was a room full of young men many of whom were more adept at draining a bottle than drawing that same bottle in slanting sunshine.

One lone stick of charcoal began scratching away. High up, farthest from the center of the room. That would be young Mr. Henderson, who preferred the longer perspective. Slight, blond, barely emerging from adolescence. Henderson never said much, but when he did pose a question to Monsieur, the answer came without the usual garnish of sarcasm and criticism.

Henderson had talent and didn’t feel compelled to bruit that about. Lord Dermot Anthony, by contrast, had sizeable talent and an even bigger mouth. Always in the front row, close enough that Michael could smell the fetid aroma of debauchery blended with expensive shaving soap wafting from the lordly person.

Everybody liked Lord Dermot, and even Monsieur offered him the occasional encouraging remark. Lord Dermot’s mama, the marchioness of Stanbridge, was a noted patroness of the arts.