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 of models. Three girls, hired cheap because their employment would be long and steady, did all the posing. And naturally you couldn't draw them and paint them just as they were—not once even. You had to make them mature or adolescent, dark, brown or blond, white or sun-kissed precisely as you were directed and as the needs of the composition demanded.

They were patient, intelligent, friendly girls who smoked vigorously during their resting times and earned their money many times over. That they were naked much of the time did not seem to be of any especial interest to them or to anybody else. At first Edward had been interested and embarrassed. That was only natural. Any boy would have been. But the embarrassment wore off quickly and the quality of his interest changed. It became an absorbing interest in planes and color and lights and darks, joints and articulations. He did not at first think that the female body, stripped of everything, was especially beautiful to look at. And he did not until he had made the discovery that neither he nor anybody else had ever drawn or painted anything quite so beautiful. And he learned at this time, definitely and for all time, that the coloring of the young human is lovelier than any combination of pigments that has ever been tried. He saw reds and blues and greens and yellows but in