“That’s nonsense, of course,” Charlotte replied. “You are very lovely, as you probably know. But that doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t agreed, I was thinking of painting Campion, our butler. What I want is a look, not a face. See—if you look at Sophie here, what I tried to do was catch Sophie herself, not just a beautiful set of features.”

Chloe looked hard at the painting. “Oh,” she finally said. “She’s very, um, alluring, isn’t she?”

Charlotte beamed. “Yes. And that’s Sophie too, in person.”

Chloe thought about the hungry eyes of the men surrounding Sophie York the night before. “Yes,” she said. “But there’s something more….”

“It’s a joke to her,” Charlotte said. “She is provocative, but not really seductive. What I mean is, she’s untouched, herself.” Charlotte strongly wondered if she should be so explicit with a young, chaste girl. But Chloe was only the third person to see the painting, not counting Sophie, and the first who had bothered to ask her anything about it.

“I see,” Chloe said slowly. “It’s around the mouth, isn’t it? She looks—well, like the goddess Diana. Not that I know what Diana looks like,” she added in some confusion. “But as a goddess, she’s supposed to be incredibly beautiful, but rejected all men, isn’t that right?”

“I never thought,” Charlotte replied with interest. “I’m not sure I’d agree … I thought of the picture more as someone who plays with fire she doesn’t understand—yet.”

“Ah,” Chloe said. Now she understood perfectly. Only two days ago she would have unhesitatingly classed herself with Sophie, except she didn’t even play at being seductive. But last night an emotion she didn’t know she had blazed into life when Will Holland kissed her.

She turned back to Charlotte without saying anything, but Charlotte instantly realized that Chloe was no demure, unawakened maiden. Chloe said so little that one was in danger of classifying her as naive. Charlotte was growing more interested in this portrait every moment.

“What would you like me to do?” Chloe asked politely.

Charlotte led her over to a comfortable divan. “I should like you simply to sit. There is no need to fix your head in one position, or not move. I am going to spend the next couple of hours making a whole series of sketches of your head in profile and from the front. Then, as I told you last night, I will work on it myself for a while, and hatch a plan. And then I will ask you to come back for another sitting, probably next week.”