“And if Jimmy ever does make good, they’ll have me to thank for it, even if I am an artist’s model!”
XXXIII
JUNE had come and I was filling the last of my engagements. There was not a single other day on my calendar for the week, and it was Wednesday. I had had only two engagements the week before.
I was posing for three women. The work was easy, as they were amateurs, and liked to meet together and use the same model, and paint and have a social time. I was posing in a gypsy costume, and they talked to me occasionally in a patronizing way, as if I were a little poodle. One of them asked me if I wouldn’t like to paint. I knew I could paint better than she could, but I pretended to simper and said:
“Oh, yes, indeed.”
One of the women, with kind-looking eyes, smiled at me and asked me if I managed to make a living, and then the one who had asked me if I would like to paint said:
“Oh, by the way, we won’t need you again, as we are all off for the country.”
She added that they might be able to use me the next season, and I wondered dully to myself whether I would need them when the new season came. A feeling of despair was stealing over me—despair and recklessness.
The woman with the kind eyes who asked me if I made a living, I have since recognized as the wife of the President. I wish I had known her better.
Though I had so little work to do, nevertheless I was feeling languid and tired in these days, and when I reached my room that afternoon, I threw myself bodily down upon my bed. I felt that I did not want to get up even to go out for my dinner. I was lying there with my face buried in the pillow, when Miss Darling called up the stairs: