Paris: The Novel

smiled. “As for our family’s little secret, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to some of the stuff he knows about his clients.”
    Hadley nodded.
    “By the way,” Marc continued, “you won’t ever mention this business to Marie, will you?”
    “Of course not. Never. But you don’t think she might hear?”
    Marc shook his head.
    “Not a chance. In the same circumstances, would an American girl know?”
    “Girls from respectable families are brought up with very strict morals. But they’re not shrinking violets. They usually have some idea of what’s going on.”
    “If my parents have anything to do with it, not a word of this will ever be spoken in front of her. She will be totally innocent.” He grinned. “But don’t worry, Hadley, I can introduce you to plenty of girls who aren’t so respectable.”
    Frank Hadley considered.
    “So tell me,” he said quietly, “where does Mademoiselle Ney fit into all this respectability?”

    Sometimes, Marc had to admit, his private life was getting too complicated. Women found him attractive, he told himself. That was the trouble. Apart from two models and the banker’s wife who’d sat for him, and Corinne Petit, of course, there had been numerous casual encounters.
    Hortense Ney, however, was a very different matter.
    At first, he had hardly known what to make of her. Though she was not yet married, it was clear that she had long ago reached the age of independence. She spoke little, yet was very much in control of herself. When he asked her to sit down across from the window and look across to the wall on his left, so that he might study her for a while and see how the light fell across her face, she sat very still, her expression unsmiling and quite immobile. She was slim, her face pale. She wore a long skirt, and an elegant jacket closed tightly up to her neck, the sleeves with a small, fashionable puff at the shoulders. The ensemble was topped off by a little hat with a feather. Everything was neat, controlled, buttoned up.
    So that it was hardly surprising that Marc experienced a growing curiosity to discover what lay underneath this cool, closed perfection.
    “Were you expecting to be painted sitting down?” he asked after a while.
    She did not turn her face toward him, but her shoulders moved just enough to suggest a shrug.
    “I suppose so.”
    “I am going to ask you, if you please, to stand up and this time to look toward me. If I move about, do not turn to look at me, but stay in the same attitude.”
    He did move about. She kept perfectly still.
    “If I asked you to stand like that for an hour or two,” he asked, “do you think you could do it?”
    “Yes.”
    “I shall provide you with a chair to stand beside. I should like you to come next time wearing a dress, something that you might wear in the evening, open at the neck. Naturally, your hair will be coiffed as though you were going to a dinner party. Please also bring a fan.”
    “As you wish, monsieur. That is all for now?”
    “Yes. I have made some quick sketches of you. Now I have to study them.” He smiled. “Most carefully. It will take me many hours.”
    “Oh.” Her face, just, registered surprise.
    “You only have to return,” he said pleasantly, “but I have to begin to understand you, and I have much to learn.”
    It was a line he had used a few times already. It usually worked.

    She had come for her sittings once or twice a week. He had discovered gradually that, though she didn’t talk much, she was well-informed. She saw all the exhibitions, went to galleries, plays, and sometimes the opera, although music interested her little. She attended charity events and was even a trustee for one or two. It seemed that she knew a good deal about her father’s legal practice, and Marc soon realized, from small remarks Hortense let fall, that she had a sharp eye for making money.
    But she had never given any hint of interest in sex. Hadley came by one day during a sitting and afterward remarked: “That’s a cold, prim woman.”
    It might be so, but to Marc, there was something about her, something contained yet erotic, that made him all the more curious. By the third week, he started making small moves, delicate suggestions, to see if he got any response.
    He didn’t. She observed him calmly with her brown eyes, but gave him nothing for his pains.
    A month had passed before one afternoon he found it necessary to rearrange the line of her dress over her breasts.