“Well, yes. I suppose you haven’t yet finished ‘The Sultan’s Favourite’?”
“No; there it is,” he replied, pointing to a canvas placed with its face towards the wall. “I have not touched it since you left. It has been awaiting your return before I could finish it.”
“Am I to continue my sittings, then?” she asked coquettishly.
“Why, of course,” he replied, lolling against his easel and regarding her amusedly. “You know well enough what crude daubs my figures would be if I did not have your model. I owe the greater part of my success to you, and since your absence I’ve done absolutely nothing that has satisfied me.”
She was well aware that the words he spoke were the truth. Through several years of desperate struggle against adversity she had been his adviser and assistant, watching with gratification his steady progress. Each picture he completed was more natural and more perfect. He could work from no other model, she knew, therefore it did not surprise her when he announced his intention to resume without further delay what promised to be his masterpiece, “The Sultan’s Favourite.”
In half an hour she had exchanged her dress for the filmy garments and velvet zouave of an Oriental beauty, and was lying half recumbent upon the silken divan in a careless, graceful attitude. When she had assumed exactly the same pose as before, with one naked foot dangling near the ground and the stray embroidered slipper beside her, she told him to commence.
During the morning the artist worked on in the best of spirits. Delighted at the return of his companion and confidante, whom he had despaired of seeing again, he chatted and laughed in a manner quite unusual to him, for he always preserved a rather morose silence when he had any difficult work in hand. One thing, however, was unaccountable, and caused him considerable surprise. When he had been painting about an hour he made a discovery. He was engaged in heightening the tone of the neck, and, finding her head cast rather too much shadow, asked her to turn a little more upon her side. She did so rather reluctantly, he thought—and then he noticed upon her neck, half-hidden by the heavy necklace of Turkish coins she wore, a long ugly scar.
“Why, Dolly!” he exclaimed in consternation, leaving his easel and walking up to examine her more closely, “what’s the matter with your neck?”
“Nothing,” she replied, somewhat embarrassed.
“But you’ve had a fearful wound. How did it occur?”