“Your name has some sort of resemblance to mine,” began Darr Veter.

The corners of her tiny mouth quivered as she suppressed a smile.

“Just as you yourself are like me!”

Darr Veter looked over the top of the mass of thick, slightly wavy black hair that came level with his shoulder and smiled expansively at Veda.

“Veter, you don’t know how to pay compliments to the ladies,” said Veda, coyly holding her head on one side.

“Does one have to know that deception is no longer needed?”

“One does,” Evda Nahl put in, “and the need for it will never die out!”

“I’d be glad if you’d explain what you mean,” said Darr Veter, knitting his brows.

“In a month from now I shall be giving the autumn lecture at the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, and it will contain a lot about spontaneous emotions, but in the meantime…” Evda nodded to Mven Mass who was approaching them.

The African, as usual, was walking noiselessly and with measured tread. Darr Veter noticed that the tan on Chara’s cheeks became tinged with pink as though the sun that had permeated her body were bursting out through her tanned skin. Mven Mass bowed indifferently.

“I’ll bring Renn Bose here, he’s sitting over there on a rock.”

“We’ll all go to him,” suggested Veda, “and on the way we’ll meet Miyiko. She’s gone for the diving apparatus. Chara Nandi, are you coming with us?”

The girl shook her head.

“Here comes my master. The sun has gone down and work will soon begin.”

“Posing must be hard work,” said Veda, “it’s a real deed of valour! I couldn’t.”

“I thought I couldn’t do it, either. But if the artist’s idea attracts you, you enter into the creative work. You seek an incarnation of the image in your own body, there are thousands of shades in every movement, in every curve! You have to catch them like musical notes before they fly away.”

“Chara, you’re a real find for an artist!”

“A find!” A deep bass voice interrupted Veda. “And if you only knew how I found her! It’s unbelievable!”

Artist Cart Sann raised a big fist high in the air and shook it. His straw-coloured hair was tousled by the wind, his weather-beaten face was brick-red and his strong hairy legs sank into the sand a though they were growing there.

“Come along with us, if you have time,” asked Veda, ‘‘and tell us the story.”

‘“I’m not much of a story-teller. But still, it’s an amusing tale. I’m interested in reconstructions, especially in the reconstruction of various racial types such as existed in ancient days, right up to the Era of Disunity. After my picture Daughter of Gondwana met with such success I was burning with ambition to reincarnate another racial type. The beauty of the human body is the best expression of race after generations of clean, healthy life. Every race tin the past had its detailed formulas, its canons of beauty I that had been evolved in days of savagery. That is the way we, the artists, understand it, we who are considered to be lagging behind in the storm of the heights of culture. Artists always did think that way, probably from the days of the palaeolithic cave painter. But I’m getting off the track…. I had planned another picture, Daughter of Thetis, of the Mediterranean, that is. It struck me that the myths of ancient Greece, Crete, Mesopotamia, America, Polynesia, all told of gods coming out of the sea. What could be more wonderful than the Hellenic myth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The very name, Aphrodite Anadiomene, the Foam-Born, she who rose from the sea…. A goddess, born of foam and conceived by the light of the stars in the nocturnal sea — what people ever invented a legend more poetic….”

“From starlight and sea-foam,” Veda heard Chara whisper. She cast a side glance at the girl. Her strong profile, like a carving from wood or stone, was like that of some woman of an ancient race. The small, straight, slightly rounded nose, her somewhat sloping forehead, her strong chin and, most important of all, the great distance from the nose to the high ear — all these features typical of the Mediterranean peoples at the time of antiquity were reflected in Chara’s face.

Unobtrusively Veda examined her from head to foot and thought that everything in her was just a little “too much.” Her skin was too smooth, her waist too narrow, her hips too wide. And she held herself too straight so that her firm bosom became too prominent. Perhaps that was what the artist wanted, strongly defined lines?

A stone ridge crossed their path and Veda had to correct the impression she had only just received: Chara Nandi jumped from boulder to boulder with an unusual agility, as though she were dancing.

“She must have Indian blood in her,” decided Veda. “I’ll ask her later on.”

“My work on the Daughter of Thetis,” the artist continued, “brought me closer to the sea, I had to get a feeling for the sea since my Maid of Crete, like Aphrodite, would arise from the waves and in such a manner that everybody would understand it. When I was preparing to paint the Daughter of Gondwana I spent three years at a forestry station in Equatorial Africa. When that picture was finished I took a job as mechanic on a hydroplane carrying mail around the Atlantic — you know, to all those fisheries and albumin and salt works afloat on big metal rafts in the ocean.

“One evening I was driving along in the Central Atlantic somewhere to the west of the Azores where the northern current and the counter-current meet. There are always big waves there, rollers that come one after another. My hydroplane rose and fell, one moment almost touching the low clouds and next minute diving deep into the trough between the rollers. The screw raced as it came out of the water. I was standing on the high bridge beside the helmsman. And suddenly… I’ll never forget it!

“Imagine a wave higher than any of the others that raced towards us. On the crest of this giant wave, right under the low ceiling of rosy-pearl clouds stood a girl, sunburned to the colour of bronze. The wave rolled noiselessly on and she rode it, infinitely proud in her isolation in the midst of that boundless ocean. My boat was swept upwards and we passed the girl who waved us a friendly greeting. Then I could see that she was standing on a surf board fitted with an electric motor and accumulator.”

“I know the sort,” agreed Darr Veter, “it’s intended for riding the waves.”

“What amazed me most of all was her complete solitude — there was nothing but low clouds, an ocean empty for hundreds of miles around, the evening twilight and the girl carried along on the crest of a giant wave. That girl….”

“Was Chara Nandi,” said Evda Nahl. “That’s obvious, but where did she come from?”

“She was not born of starlight and foam!” chuckled Chara, and her laughter had a surprisingly high, resonant note to it, “merely from the raft of an albumin factory. We were moored on the fringe of the Sargasso Sea where we were cultivating Chlorella[16] and where I was working as a biologist.”

“Be that as it may,” said Cart Sann, “but from that moment for me you were a daughter of the Mediterranean, born of foam. You were fated to be the model for my future picture. I had been waiting a whole year.” “May we come and look at it?” asked Veda Kong. “Please do, but not during working hours. You had better come in the evening. I work very slowly and cannot tolerate anybody’s presence when I am painting.” “Do you use colours?”

“Our work has changed very little during the thousands of years that people have painted pictures. The laws of optics and the human eye have remained the same. We have become more receptive to certain tones, new chromokatoptric colours[17]” with internal reflexions contained in the paint layer have been invented, there are a few new methods of harmonizing colours, that’s all; on the whole the artist of antiquity worked in very much the same way as I do today. In some respects he did better. He had confidence and patience — we’ve become more dashing and less confident of ourselves. At times strict nalvete is better for art. But I’m digressing again! It’s time for us to go. Come along, Chara!”