She was a woman of twenty-two or three, with an oval face whose fairness was the fairness of ivory. She was dark-eyed and low-browed, and as she leaned forward upon the table and looked up at the man who spoke to her, even the bright glow of the lamp, which burned directly before her face, showed no flaw in either tint or outline.
“Why should we ask the reason of your return?” said the man. “Let us rejoice that you are here.”
“I will tell you the reason,” she answered, without lowering her eyes. “I was tired.”
“A good reason,” was the reply.
She pushed her chair back and stood upright; her hands hung at her side; the men were all looking at her; she smiled down at them with fine irony.
“Who among you wishes to paint me?” she said. “I am again at your service, and I am not less handsome than I was.”
Then there arose among them a little rapturous murmur, and somehow it broke the spell which had rested upon the man outside. He started, shivered slightly and turned away. He went up to the bare coldness of his own room and sat down, forgetting that it was either cold or bare. Suddenly, as he had looked at the woman’s upturned face, a great longing had seized upon him.
“I should like to paint you—I,” he found himself saying to the silence about him. “If I might paint you!”
He heard the next day who she was. The concierge was ready enough to give him more information than he had asked.
“Mademoiselle Natalie, Monsieur means,” he said; “a handsome girl that; a celebrated model. They all know her. Her face has been the foundation of more than one great picture. There are not many like her. One model has this beauty—another that; but she, mon Dieu, she has all. A great creature, Mademoiselle.”