“A good day?” étienne asked as they strolled along the boulevard du Montparnasse.
“I suppose. Every time I stand in front of the canvas, though, I feel there’s more I need to add. More I need to say, if that makes any sense.”
“It does.”
“Which of your paintings will you submit to Ma?tre Czerny?” she asked, weary of fretting about her own work.
“I’m not certain, not yet.”
She thought of the paintings he’d finished, hanging on the back wall of the salon, all of them superb; any one might become the talk of that year’s Salon des Indépendants. “What about the—”
“It is tiresome of me to persist in asking,” he interrupted, “but I cannot help myself. In my mind I can see it, see you, so clearly.”
“See . . . ?”
“Your portrait.”
Not again. He had asked her a half-dozen times at least, and she had always been very firm in her refusal. “étienne, you know how I feel.”
“I do, but I cannot help how I feel.”
“Is there no one else you wish to paint? We could find you a model. The young woman from our life class the other week—she was lovely.”
“She was, but she didn’t inspire me as you do. Why do you refuse me, Hélène?”
“I told you already—I don’t like being the center of attention. I never have.”
At some point in the last few minutes they had stopped walking and stood facing one another as passersby brushed past them impatiently. The silence between them grew and grew, so tangible she could nearly taste it.
And then it came to her. This was her year to live, but yet again she was allowing fear to rule her. Did she truly care what strangers thought of her? No. Would it help a dear and cherished friend if she were to say yes? It would.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she told him. “I’ll sit for you.”
They began late on Monday afternoon. The sun had already begun to set, so étienne turned up the lanterns until they hissed and sparked, bathing the entire studio in warm, enveloping light.
étienne had set the least battered of their chairs a few feet away from the little coal stove; the light was soft and kind, and she felt less exposed, there in the corner of the studio, than she’d have done in the middle of the room or next to the windows. Not certain of what pose he wished her to adopt, she sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap.
She was wearing her golden Vionnet gown, as étienne had asked her to do; not only was it the loveliest of all her frocks, but it was also the most comfortable. Her feet were bare, also at his direction; she had done nothing to her hair, she wore no jewelry, and her face was entirely bare of cosmetics.
Helena perched on the uncomfortable chair, the tips of her toes just touching the floor, and without moving her head she allowed her gaze to drift over the studio, the paintings on the walls, the calm and studied movements of her friend, and she thought of all that she had done, and all that had happened to her, in the space of a year.
Last spring, she had promised her parents she would return to London, but so much had changed since then. She had changed. And she wasn’t certain, now, that she could ever go back.
SHE SAT FOR étienne three more times that week. He didn’t show her his preliminary sketches, nor the painting as he worked on it, and she didn’t ask. The composition was on a grand scale, larger than life-size, and while she was curious to see what he had created she was also a trifle apprehensive.
After Helena had finished posing for étienne, he worked steadily on the portrait for another week, and only then was he ready to share it with her and Mathilde. He made a great ceremony of the moment, insisting that they close their eyes until he had arranged the canvas on an easel and unveiled it properly.
At last the command came. “Open your eyes,” he called out.
Helena had thought she would know what to expect. She had assumed the painting would be of a woman, dressed in gold, seated on a chair. The painting did depict one woman; but it also, astonishingly, encompassed two portraits.
An invisible line ran vertically through the middle of the canvas, and while the left half of the woman was depicted in a neoclassical and entirely realist manner, her right half was an entirely abstract exercise in Cubist forms and shapes. It was at once a technical tour de force and an exposition of the strengths and limitations of two vastly different schools of expression.
“Well? What do you think?” étienne looked so nervous, so uncertain. Did he truly not see the brilliance of his creation?
“With this painting, you will set this world on fire,” she said, willing him to believe. “It will be the talk of the Salon.”
“Mathilde?” he asked.
“I agree with Helena. This painting will change everything for you. It is magnifique.”
He smiled shyly, then shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that Helena was sure he didn’t feel. “Nothing is certain until Czerny agrees to submit it to the Salon. Until then, all we can do is hope. And drink champagne.”