Chapter VII: Part 7

"I want to paint you just as you are," he said, and noticing that she looked rather disdainfully at her shabby black cashmere, added, "The black of your dress could not be better."

"We thought," said Miss Snell, deprecatingly, "that you might like a costume. We could easily arrange one."

"Not in the least necessary," said the Painter. "I have set my heart on painting her just as she is."

The girls were disappointed in his want of taste. They had had visions of a creation in which two Liberty scarfs and a velveteen table cover were combined in a felicitous harmony of color.

"When can I have the first sitting?" he asked.

"Tuesday, I think," said Miss Snell, reflectively.

"Heavens!" thought the Painter. "Is Miss Snell coming with her?" And the possibility kept him in a state of nervousness until Tuesday afternoon, when Cora appeared, accompanied by the inevitable Miss Snell.

It turned out, however, that the latter could not stay. She would call for Cora later; just now her afternoons were occupied. She was doing a pastel portrait in the Champs Elysées quarter, so she reluctantly left, to the Painter's great relief.

He did not make himself very agreeable during the sittings which followed. He was apt to get absorbed in his work and to forget to say anything. Then Miss Snell would appear to fetch her friend, and he would apologize for being so dull, and Cora would remark that she enjoyed sitting quietly, it rested her after the noise and confusion at Julian's.

"If she talked much I could not paint her, her voice is so irritating," he confided to a friend who was curious and asked all sorts of questions about his new sitter.

The work went well but slowly, for Cora sat only twice a week. She felt obliged to devote the rest of her time to study, as she was living on the prize fund, and she even had qualms of conscience about the two afternoons she gave up to the sittings.

During all this time Miss Snell continued to weave chapters of romance about Cora and the Painter, and the girls talked things over after each sitting when they were alone together.

Spring had appeared very early in the year, and the public gardens and boulevards were richly green. Chestnut-trees blossomed and gaudy flower-beds bloomed in every square. The Salons opened, and were thronged with an enthusiastic public, although the papers as usual denounced them as being the poorest exhibitions ever given.

The Painter had sent nothing, being completely absorbed in finishing Cora's portrait, to the utter exclusion of everything else.

Cora did the exhibitions faithfully. It was one of the duties she owed to the Lynxville fund, and which she diligently carried out. The Painter bothered and confused her by many things; he persistently admired all the pictures she liked least, and praised all those she did not care for. She turned pale with suppressed indignation when he differed from her opinion, and resented his sweeping contempt of her criticisms.

On the strength of a remittance from the prize fund, and in honor of the season, she discarded the sailor hat for a vivid ready-made creation smacking strongly of the Bon Marché. The weather was warm, and Cora wore mitts, which the Painter thought unpardonable in a city where gloves are particularly cheap. The mitts were probably fashionable in Lynxville, Massachusetts. Miss Snell, who rustled about in stiff black silk and bugles, seemed quite oblivious to her friend's want of taste; she was all excitement, for her pastel portrait--by some hideous mistake--had been accepted and hung in one of the exhibitions, and the girls went together on varnishing-day to see it. There they met the Painter prowling aimlessly about, and Miss Snell was delighted to note his devotion to Cora. It was a strong proof of his attachment to her, she thought. The truth was he felt obliged to be civil after her kindness in posing. He wished he could repay her in some fashion, but since his first visit to Miss Snell's she had never offered to show him her work again, or asked his advice in any way, and he felt a delicacy about offering his services as a teacher when she gave him so little encouragement. He fancied, too, that she did not take much interest in his work, and knew she did not appreciate his portrait of her, which was by far the best thing he had ever done.

Her lack of judgment vexed him, for he knew the value of his work, and every day his fellow-painters trooped in to see it, and were loud in their praises. It would certainly be the _clou_ of any exhibition in which it might be placed.

During one sitting Cora ventured to remark that she thought it a pity he did not intend to make the portrait more complete, and suggested the addition of various accessories which in her opinion would very much improve it.

"It's by far the most complete thing I have ever done," he said. "I sha'n't touch it again," and he flung down his brushes in a fit of temper.

She looked at him contemptuously, and putting on her hat, left the studio without another word; and for several weeks he did not see her again.

Then he met her in the street, and begged her to come and pose for a head in his big picture, which he had taken up once more. His apologies were so abject that she consented, but she ceased to be punctual, and he never could feel quite sure that she would keep her appointments.

Sometimes he would wait a whole afternoon in vain, and one day when she failed to appear at the promised hour he shut up his office and strolled down to the Seine. There he caught sight of her with a gay party who were about to embark on one of the little steamers that ply up and down the river.

He shook his fist at her from the quay where he stood, and watched her and her party step into the boat from the pier.

"She thinks little enough of the Lynxville Prize Fund when she wants an outing," he said to himself, scornfully.

After fretting a little over his wasted afternoon, he forgot all about her, and set to work with other models. Then he left Paris for the summer.

* * * * *

A few hours after his return, early in the fall, there came a knock at his door. He had been admiring Cora's portrait, which to his fresh eye looked exceptionally good.

Miss Snell, with eyes red and tearful, stood on his door-mat when he answered the tap.

"Poor dear Cora," she said, had received a notice from the Lynxville committee that they did not consider her work sufficiently promising to continue the fund another year.

"She will have to go home," sobbed Miss Snell, but said: "I am forced to admit that Cora has wasted a good deal of time this summer. She is so young, and needs a little distraction, now and then," and she appealed to the Painter for confirmation of this undoubted fact.

He was absent-minded, but assented to all she said. In his heart he thought it a fortunate thing that the prize fund should be withdrawn. One female art student the less: he grew pleased with the idea. Cora had ceased to interest him as an individual, and he considered her only as one of an obnoxious class.

"I thought you ought to be the first to know about it," said Miss Snell, confidentially, "because you might have some plan for keeping her over here." Miss Snell looked unutterable things that she did not dare to put into words.

She made the Painter feel uncomfortable, she looked so knowing, and he became loud in his advice to send Cora home at once.

"Pack her off," he cried. "She is wasting time and money by staying. She never had a particle of talent, and the sooner she goes back to Lynxville the better."

Miss Snell shrank from his vehemence, and wished she had not insisted upon coming to consult him. She had assured Cora that the merest hint would bring matters to a crisis. Cora would imagine that she had bungled matters terribly, and she was mortified at the thought of returning with the news of a repulse.

As soon as she had gone, the Painter felt sorry he had been so hasty. He had bundled her unceremoniously out of the studio, pleading important work.

He called twice in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, but the porter would never let him pass her lodge, and he at last realized that she had been given orders to that effect. A judicious tip extracted from her the fact that Miss Price expected to leave for America the following Saturday, and, armed with an immense bouquet, he betook himself to the St. Lazare station at the hour for the departure of the Havre express.

He arrived with only a minute to spare before the guard's whistle was answered by the mosquitolike pipe that sets the train in motion.

The Botticelli profile was very haughty and cold. Miss Snell was there, of course, bathed in tears. He had just time enough to hand in his huge bouquet through the open window before the train started. He caught one glimpse of an angry face within, when suddenly his great nosegay came flying out of the compartment, and striking him full in the face, spread its shattered paper and loosened flowers all over the platform at his feet.