4 February, 1895 — Emrys' Home, Bristol

One of the things Emrys had been distracting himself with was diving into a dozen new art projects. Organizing and paying for them, anyway, not participating. One of the projects was a seminary for up-and-coming young artists, and one of the requirements were models. Ester was otherwise occupied and many of her friends were unreliable, so he needed a fresh cache of them — and he needed models who wouldn't balk at the idea of posing nude. So he'd decided to advertise. The print shop he'd ordered fliers from wasn't one he'd used before but someone had recommended it as the sort of place that wouldn't turn business away, certainly not on the grounds of moral questionability, so he'd placed an order — but now someone from the print shop was paying a call, so Emrys had to wonder if he'd been misinformed. Perhaps advertising for nude models crossed a line that divorce pamphlets didn't.

He was seated at the desk in his study when the man was shown up. Emrys gestured towards the chair across from him. "From the print shop?" he said. The servant had given the man's name but Emrys had immediately forgotten it. "Were there some particulars we neglected to provide when we ordered? I'd thought everything was covered." (The we here could plausibly have been the collective of people involved in the seminar, but was mostly just a feint; if he used the royal we and this conversation became tense he could pretend he hadn't known about whichever particulars had ruffled feathers).

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