In the novel The Hollow, Miss Doris Sanders is a woman sitting as a model for Henrietta Savernake's clay sculpture Nausicaa (a character of Homer's Odyssey who rescues Odysseus after a shipwreck). Henrietta had been looking for a suitable model for sometime and then finally met Doris on a bus. She has a "foreshortened childish face, half-parted lips and eyes--lovely vacant, blind eyes". Henrietta later finds out that the reason for the blank stare is because Doris is extremely short-sighted but prefers not to wear her spectacles out of vanity. Once she puts on her glasses the blank stare disappears.
During the modelling sessions Doris talked continually about her life, how she had, for example, received a present from a married man which incurred the displeasure of his wife. Doris felt this was unfair because there was nothing going on. Doris found it comforting to talk to Henrietta because she appeared to listening with full attention. She does not know that Henrietta had developed the technique of appearing to be listening while remaining fully focussed on her task at hand.