Those grey eyes and that lead pencil had fixed, measured and scrutinized her more shamelessly than a mirror and put an end to her gaiety and chatter.

‘I hope I am not disturbing you this morning’, she said as they passed through the doorway. ‘Look here’, said Amelia, ‘do you, or do you not want to see me pose? Another time I’ll be careful to keep clear of respectable girls’.

All the studio windows were open and the curtains drawn back and while they were waiting for Barbetta, the old servant emerged from the stairway to come and keep an eye on them. Ginia wondered whether Amelia was getting ready to sit but she could hear her arguing with the old servant and getting her to close the windows because the morning air was chilling the room. The old woman mumbled rather than spoke, her face was so scruffy and hairy that Amelia was laughing at it, quite openly.

At length Barbetta arrived, putting on his overall and rushing around. The easel was moved to the back of the studio and his palette was brought in. There was a divan-bed at the far end and they drew all the curtains except the last one so that all the light fell on to that corner. Ginia felt de trop in all the turmoil and she got the impression that the old woman was looking at her disapprovingly.

When the latter left the room, Amelia began undressing near the divan and Ginia began to watch Barbetta’s large hand. He held a thin piece of charcoal between his fingers and he was putting in a dark background on a sheet of whitish paper pinned on the easel. Without so much as a look in her direction, Barbetta told her to sit down, and she could hear Amelia saying something. Ginia gazed through the skylight on to the roofs as if she were posing again and thought how stupid she was. She made an effort and turned round.

Her first reaction was that Amelia must be feeling cold, that Barbetta hardly seemed to be looking at her and that it was she herself who was the nuisance, coming along like that out of curiosity. Amelia, a brunette, somehow looked dirty and she found difficulty in keeping her eyes on her. She was sitting on the divan with her arms against the back of a chair, her face turned away and displaying the whole of her leg and thigh and right up to her armpit. Ginia got bored after a while. She watched Barbetta rubbing out and redrawing, saw his brow wrinkled with concentration, exchanged a smile with Amelia – but she still felt bored. But her heart began to beat again when Amelia got up for the first time to stretch herself and picked up her bathing slip which had fallen off the divan. It was the sort of foolish excitement she would have felt if they had been alone, the excitement at the discovery that they were both made in the same mould and whoever had seen Amelia naked was really seeing her. She began to feel terribly ill at ease.

From her head that was resting on her arm came Amelia’s voice, ‘Hello, Ginia’. It was enough to please and calm her. A moment before she had noticed a red mottling on Amelia’s leg and wondered whether if she stripped, she would have markings like that. ‘But my skin is younger’, she said. Then she asked aloud, ‘Has he ever painted you in colour?’ It was Barbetta who replied, ‘Colours are not accurate. They come in the window with the sunlight. Colours do not exist indoors’. ‘Naturally’, interpolated Amelia, ‘you’re too mean. Colours cost money!’ ‘Excuse me!’ shouted the old man, ‘the reason is that I have a proper respect for colour and you know nothing at all about it beyond the colour you smear on your lips. This blonde here knows more about it than you’. Amelia shrugged her shoulders but without shifting her head.

The sound of a siren came from somewhere beyond the roof-tops and Ginia began to stroll round. She discovered the portrait sketches of her on the window-sill but had not the courage to ask for them. As she looked through them she saw those of Amelia again and eyed them rapidly, wondering if Amelia had really assumed the poses shown, some of which almost suggested acrobatic feats.