"Here is one! I have the idea that artists have no eyes. How they pose me ever as l'Été or La Source or Leda, or that clumsy Suzanne with her eternal old men. As if they knew better than I do how a woman holds herself up or sits herself down, or nurses a duck, or defends herself!"
"Your idea is probably correct. I understand you to propose that I should paint a picture called The Blind Artist?"
"Don't do the imbecile. I propose for subject Me—not posed; me as I am in the Rest. Is it not that it is then that I am the most pretty, the most chic?"
"It certainly is," said he. "And you propose that I should paint you as you appear in the Rest?"
"Perfectly," she interrupted. "Tender rose colour—it goes to a marvel with my Cléo de Mérode hair. And if you want a contrast—or one of those little tricks to make people say: 'What does it mean?'"
"I don't, thank you," he laughed.
"Paint that white drowned girl's face that hangs behind your stove. Paint her and me looking at each other. She has the air of felicitating herself that she is dead. Me, I will have the air of felicitating myself that I am alive. You will see, Monsieur. Essay but one sole little sketch, and you will think of nothing else. One might entitle it 'The Rivals.'"
"Or 'The Rest,'" said Vernon, a little interested. "Oh, well, I'm not doing anything.—I'll make a sketch and give it you as a present. Come in an hour."
"Auntie, wake up, wake up!" Betty, white-faced and determined, was pulling back the curtain with fingers that rigidly would not tremble.