A sense of strangeness seemed to dawn on the lady. "We mean for
the illustrations--Mr. Rivet said you might put one in."

"Put in--an illustration?" I was equally confused.

"Sketch her off, you know," said the gentleman, colouring.

It was only then that I understood the service Claude Rivet had
rendered me; he had told them how I worked in black-and-white, for
magazines, for story-books, for sketches of contemporary life, and
consequently had copious employment for models. These things were
true, but it was not less true--I may confess it now; whether
because the aspiration was to lead to everything or to nothing I
leave the reader to guess--that I couldn't get the honours, to say
nothing of the emoluments, of a great painter of portraits out of
my head. My "illustrations" were my pot-boilers; I looked to a
different branch of art--far and away the most interesting it had
always seemed to me--to perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in
looking to it also to make my fortune but that fortune was by so
much further from being made from the moment my visitors wished to
be "done" for nothing. I was disappointed; for in the pictorial
sense I had immediately SEEN them. I had seized their type--I had
already settled what I would do with it. Something that wouldn't
absolutely have pleased them, I afterwards reflected.

"Ah you're--you're--a -?" I began as soon as I had mastered my
surprise. I couldn't bring out the dingy word "models": it seemed
so little to fit the case.