E. Nesbit

“ It is my coloured hair that is so difficult to find. He doesn’t know any model who has it—not naturally, I mean, and you can always tell, can’t you?”
“I can always tell,” said Seddon, dreamily. “Will the portrait—I mean the picture—be for sale, Miss Carmichael? Already I have been fortunate enough to secure some half-dozen masterpieces by our Henry. Seven is the mystical number. I should be indeed the favourite of the gods if I could count my treasures as seven, and the seventh the sevenfold prize—the portrait of Miss Carmichael.”
“It isn’t a bit like me, at present,” said Daphne. ”

“ Again and again she told herself, in those grey hours when one tells oneself the truth and more than the truth, that the whole business was a mirage, that she was giving every thought, every dream, her strength, her youth, her beauty, and getting nothing in return. ”

“ She reached home too tired to play with Doris, too tired for anything but to lie flat on her bed and listen to Cousin Jane’s prim, gentle chatter, Doris’s hushed rompings, as the child was undressed and made ready for bed. ”

“ As he says, I don’t suppose there’s another rich man in the world who has such nice friends—friends who let him stand treat just as if he were one of themselves. Don’t you see? What he likes so much is to pretend that he’s one of you—a hard-up art student, and that he’s just got a windfall that lets him stand treat for once—just as you all stand treat when any money happens to happen to any of you. If he made friends with rich people, his money wouldn’t buy him anything but a sameness with them—I’m saying it very badly——”
“No, you’re not,” said Claud. ”

“ It had been planned to begin the day with a railway journey, but Seddon came round to Claud’s rooms the evening before with a beautiful suggestion of motor-cars. Daphne was called down to give the casting vote.
“The motor-car is the emblem of sordid modernity and Mammon worship, dear Miss Carmichael, is it not?” Seddon said. “The Mammon worship against which we are all pledged to fight to the last drop of our blood. What nobler victory than to enslave the motor, Mammon’s badge, to the service of the arts? ”

“ It isn’t every day that has a motor-drive in store for its tomorrow. Claud, have you any postcards? Because if you have, Mr. Seddon would post them for us”—Mr. Seddon murmured sweetly about Mercury—“and we must let everyone know they’re to be fetched by motor cars, like grand-dukes.”
“This exhibition of the Master’s,” said Seddon, as Daphne and Claud wrote postcards, kneeling opposite each other at the table, “it is a new idea.”
“It’s Vorontzoff’s idea,” said Claud. “Old Henry would never have bothered. He just paints—and if he sells he sells, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t care. ”

“ In his way he is a very great man. Are these all the postcards? I will post them. Au revoir, dearest Miss Carmichael. Winston, your stairs are death-traps.”
“I’ll light you,” said the other man, and Daphne was left alone.
“I say,” Claud said, when he came back, “what a fellow Seddon is, isn’t he? He simply insists on providing the hampers for tomorrow. Wouldn’t hear of anything else. I’m certain the gates of heaven will be specially enlarged to admit him. He is a brick. But I don’t know that we ought to let him stand treat in the way he does.” ”