"form." They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and they
respected themselves in consequence. They weren't superficial:
they were thorough and kept themselves up--it had been their line.
People with such a taste for activity had to have some line. I
could feel how even in a dull house they could have been counted on
for the joy of life. At present something had happened--it didn't
matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown
least--and they had to do something for pocket-money. Their
friends could like them, I made out, without liking to support
them. There was something about them that represented credit--
their clothes, their manners, their type; but if credit is a large
empty pocket in which an occasional chink reverberates, the chink
at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was help to make
it so. Fortunately they had no children--I soon divined that.
They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this
was why it was "for the figure"--the reproduction of the face would
betray them.

I liked them--I felt, quite as their friends must have done--they
were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit.
But somehow with all their perfections I didn't easily believe in
them. After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my
life was--the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was
another perversity--an innate preference for the represented
subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt
to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then
one was sure. Whether they WERE or not was a subordinate and
almost always a profitless question. There were other
considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or
three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in