She pauses for a moment, as if her attention has been caught by something in the window. But there is a consciousness to her carefully posed pause – an artfulness to the balletic way her leg extends, with the ankle slightly turned to show its slender beauty. Around her stand objects retained and preserved, almost arbitrarily it seems: a bent back chair suspended in the window; an Aladdin’s lamp (or is it a cake stand?); a mirror on the wall. And she stands in the centre, also an object in the picture – mute yet expressive, passive and powerful.