His friend looked. Opposite the window was a canvas on an easel; a canvas for the most part gray, and on this, confused, interlaced lines revealing some hesitancy over the various contours of a body. At one end was a spot of color, to which the master pointed—a woman's head which stood out sharply on the rough background of the cloth.
Cotoner stood in silent contemplation. Had the great artist really painted that? He did not see the master's hand. Although he was an unimportant painter, he had a good eye, and he saw in the canvas hesitancy, fear, awkwardness, the struggle with something unreal which was beyond his reach, which refused to enter the mold of form. He was struck by the lack of likeness, by the forced exaggeration of the strokes; the eyes unnaturally large, the tiny mouth, almost a point, the bright skin with its supernatural pallor. Only in the pupils of the eyes was there something remarkable—a glance that came from afar, an extraordinary light which seemed to pass through the canvas.
"It has cost me a great deal. No work ever made me suffer so. This is only the head; the easiest part. The body will come later; a divine nude, such as has never been seen. And only you shall see it, only you!"
The Bohemian no longer looked at the picture. He was gazing at the master, astonished at the work, disconcerted by its mystery.
"You see, without a model. Without the real before me," continued the master. "They were all the guide I had; but it is my best, my supreme work."
They were all the portraits of the dead woman, taken down from the walls and placed on easels or chairs in a close circle around the canvas.
His friend could not contain his astonishment, he could not pretend any longer, overcome by surprise.
"Oh, but it is—— But you have been trying to paint Josephina!"
Renovales started back violently.
"Josephina, yes. Who else should it be? Where are your eyes?"