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dozen aspiring artists at least dancing attendance on the great man.’
    ‘None the less, I spoke no more than the truth. I shall take tea with the “great man”, as you choose to call him.’
    ‘You will be lucky to exchange more than a greeting and a farewell with him.’ Adam looked across at his friend, noting the self-satisfied smile that had appeared on his face.
‘Besides, I do believe that you go to see Mrs Millais rather than her husband.’
    ‘And why not? She is a beautiful woman, Carver. Who would not want to feast his eyes upon her?’
    ‘She is married and she is fifteen years your senior, Jardine. I think perhaps your chances of a romance are limited.’
    ‘Ah, but she is a stunner none the less.’
    ‘I am pleased to hear that Mrs Millais is as lovely as rumour paints her,’ Adam said, taking a cigarette case from his pocket, then extracting a cigarette and lighting it. Smoke
drifted upwards, obscuring the image of King Pellinore on the canvas. ‘So many of these famous beauties are fabulous in the report but disappointing in person.’
    ‘Not necessarily the case, old man. I saw Skittles once riding in the park,’ Jardine said. ‘Several years ago now. She was quite as handsome as even her most besotted admirer
might claim.’
    ‘Ah, the legendary Miss Walters. The most practised of the capital’s courtesans. Or so I am told.’
    ‘I have often wondered about the origin of her sobriquet. Why Skittles? I have asked myself.’
    ‘She once worked in a bowling alley off Park Lane, I understand.’
    ‘The explanation is as simple as that, is it? Well, like Effie Millais, she was a stunner.’
    Jardine moved suddenly away from his failed likeness of King Pellinore and began to pace around the small studio, as if measuring its dimensions.
    ‘By the by,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘while we are on the subject of feminine beauty, you must tell me more of the enigmatic charmer you mentioned the other day. The lady
who came calling upon you. The lady who vanished.’
    ‘There is no more to tell. She arrived unheralded and she departed as mysteriously as she arrived. I was away but a few moments to deal with Quint and his attempts to destroy my dark room.
When I returned, she was gone.’
    ‘You must have driven her away, Carver. A remark out of place. A breach of etiquette. You were ever a blunderer where the more ornamental sex is concerned.’
    ‘Thus speaks the Lothario of Old Church Street, I suppose. You would no doubt have me believe that you would have won her heart in a matter of moments.’ Adam was smiling at his
friend’s words as Jardine continued to walk restlessly around the room. ‘I had no chance to exercise any charms I may possess. She was gone before I could attempt it. However, I can
assure you that none of my remarks was out of place. And any breach of etiquette was entirely hers.’
    The painter had returned once more to his canvas and was staring closely at it.
    ‘It is no good,’ he said, taking a step back from it. ‘It looks more like the
carte de visite
of a provincial solicitor than it does the portrait of a medieval
knight.’ The young artist made a gesture as if he was about wipe his canvas clean immediately. ‘Photography has caused much damage to the fine arts. Even I am not insusceptible to its
malign influence.’
    ‘You should be careful of remarks like that, Jardine. It is bad artists who belittle photography. They do so in the same way that stagecoach proprietors used to decry the dangers and
inconveniences of travelling by the railway.’
    Jardine, his head cocked to one side, was examining his painting from a different angle.
    ‘Aha, we are embarking on that old argument again, are we?’ he said. ‘It threatens to become stale, Carver.’
    ‘I tell you, Jardine, photography is the art of the future. The easel and the palette belong to the past’
    ‘My dear fellow, we shall have to agree to disagree. As for me, I shall stick with my