'Well, it's partly the present style,' said Edie; 'but I took the
notion of the bodice partly too from that Vandyck, you know, in
the Palazzo Bossi at Genoa.'

'I remember, I remember,' Harry answered, contemplating her with
an admiring eye. 'Now just turn round and show me how it sits
behind, Edie. You recollect Theophile Gautier says the one great
advantage which a beautiful woman possesses over a beautiful statue
is this, that while a man has to walk round the beautiful statue
in order to see it from every side, he can ask the beautiful woman
to turn herself round and let him see her, without requiring to
take that trouble.'

'Theophile Gautier was a horrid man, and if anybody but my brother
quoted such a thing as that to me I should be very angry with him
indeed.'

'Theophile Gautier was quite as horrid as you consider him to be,
and if you were anybody but my sister it isn't probable I should
have quoted him to you. But if there is any statue on earth prettier
or more graceful than you are in that dress at this moment, Edie,
then the Venus of Milo ought immediately to be pulverised to ultimate
atoms for a rank artistic impostor.'

'Thank you, Harry, for the compliment. What pretty things you must
be capable of saying to somebody else's sister, when you're so
polite and courtly to your own.'

'On the contrary, Popsy, when it comes to somebody else's sister
I'm much too nervous and funky to say anything of the kind. But