'I'll take you in the glasses,' she said.

He didn't seem to hear her. 'Phoebe says you're divorced,' he said quietly. 'Is she right?'

She looked away and began searching a shelf where she kept stacks of film. 'Is that a professional enquiry?' she asked.

'You know quite well what sort of enquiry it is.'

'I'm divorced,' she said shortly.

'For very long?'

'Three years.'

"That's long enough for you to have found someone else. Is there anyone else?'

'No.'

'Will you come out with me?'

'No.'

'Why? Because of the way I behaved when we met?'

'Of course not. It's just that I don't know you.'

'That's no reason. But you're not going to tell me the real reason, are you?'

'No.'

She turned back to him and found him studying his fingernails. 'All right,' he said. 'I'm ready if you are. Let's get started.'

He left the office and after a moment Lee followed him, slightly startled by his abruptness. The last five minutes might never have been.

They started work. Lee seated him on a high stool and moved round him, this way and that, seeking angles. In the past she'd adjusted the subject's head with her hands, but with Daniel she contented herself with saying, 'Look here-now over there-turn to me- lift your head a little-'

After a while she said, 'How come you let them get away with that awful picture on the cover?'

'I was ignorant about photography, and anyway I was only thirty-three. Why should they want to make me seem younger?'

'Perhaps they thought you looked raddled?' Lee said impishly, and was rewarded with a spontaneous laugh straight into the lens, which she immediately snapped.

'When my agent said the publisher was hassling me to sign the next contract Phoebe suggested a little blackmail,' he went on. 'I told them they'd have to get a new picture for the book they're printing now, or I wouldn't sign again. They tore their hair but I stood firm. Phoebe then said she knew the perfect photographer, and it dawned on me that she'd been pulling my strings like a puppeteer all the time.'