When she was going away, she made a movement toward the easel, but he stopped her.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not just yet.”
She drew back.
“I have never cared to look at myself before,” she said. “I do not know why I should care now. Perhaps,” with the laugh again, “it is that I wish to see what you will make of me!”
Afterward, as she sat over her little porcelain stove in her room below, she scarcely comprehended her own mood.
“He is not like the rest,” she said. “He knows nothing of the world. He is one of the good. He cares only for his art. How simple, and kind, and pure! The little room is like a saint’s cell.” And then, suddenly, she flung her arms out wearily, with a heavy sigh. “Ah, Dieu!” she said, “how dull the day is! The skies are lead!”
A few days later she gave a sitting to an old artist whose name was Masson, and she found that he had heard of what had happened.
“And so you sit to the American,” he said.
“Yes.”