Chéri’s eyes flicker in their own equivalent of a loud “ppppf, ‘course not!” And then asked, properly “When have you felt something deep? Maybe I can used that.” Seeing it again as an acting exercise. Chéri let themselves be guided to the love seat and let Darius do with the boots. Surprisingly, they didn’t take this as an innuendo, since it was a fairly normal thing for an artist to arrange a model’s clothes. While Darius helped with the shoes, Chéri unbuttoned their trousers, so that they could take the very long shirt out of them and take it off through the head, as at the time shirts didn’t open all the way down.

As Darius requested the pants being taken off, Chéri stared at him in disbelief “Unless you want me to, no.” Life models work naked, normally, entirely naked and Chéri seemed to be perfectly fine with complete nudity. They shook their heads. “It will be better for you to paint me only with what you want in the painting. Chéri proceeded to stir completely, with no embarrassment whatsoever. On the contrary, they exhibited a delightful smile on their face all along and kept their muscles relaxed, used as they were to be looked at. They even took a couple of steps, to better assure that the robe fell correctly on them. In doing this, they very briefly exposed a section of their thigh normally fairly hidden that presented an oddly dark colouring. Darius could see it only for a second and it wouldn’t be hard to convince oneself it was nothing, of course. Maybe it was just an oddly big, blue mole on that “perfect” person.

Chéri did not seem to pay attention to it. They kneeled on the loveseat, as requested and started to adjust the fabric, making sure the robe slid down correctly from their shoulder. “I think it is good. And if you start with the general figure and don’t want just a face portrait, we have time to think about the facial expression.”