martha keene had been at work for several months in etienne’s atelier, in the latin quarter of paris, and although her appearance would have led one to believe her frail in health, she had never missed a working-day, and always occupied a good position well in view of the model, because she always came among the earliest to secure it. her work was far from brilliant, and etienne had noticed her very little at first. if he did so more of late, it was her ability to stick which had won her this favor. so many students had come and gone, rousing his hopes only to disappoint them, that it had got to be rather a comfort to the little old man to be sure of one earnest worker always in her place; and while he could not say that her work was good, it was certainly not bad.
recently he had told martha this several times. “not bad” was about the highest praise that most of etienne’s pupils got from him; and when the young american girl heard it for the first time applied to her work, she experienced what was perhaps one of the most thrilling sensations of her life.
it was followed by another thrilling sensation; for, as she looked up from the canvas which the master had thus commended, she met the beautiful eyes of the princess, turned upon her with a congratulatory smile.
it was almost too much for martha. her heart thumped so that her breathing became rapid and a little difficult. instead of answering the princess’s smile, a frown contracted her forehead; for she was afraid that she was going to lose her self-control, and she needed a stern effort not to do so. martha had a heart which was made for worshiping. etienne and the princess were two of the people that she worshiped, and there was a third.
when etienne had passed on, after smudging one part of her drawing with his thumb until it was a dirty blur, and scratching another part with ruthless streaks of soft charcoal, she remembered she had received his first words of encouragement rather coldly, and had made the same sort of return for the princess’s smile. this plunged her from a state of delight into one of wretchedness. she looked toward the master with some hope of making amends; but he was too absorbed in his next criticism, and it was only too evident that her chance was gone. then she glanced at the princess, to receive the same impression from that quarter. the beautiful young woman on whom her eyes rested had stepped back from her easel, and with her head turned sidewise, and her eyelids drawn up, was looking at her picture. she held a brush in one hand, with the fingers delicately poised, and in the other her palette, laid with brilliant dabs of color. her lips were pursed critically, and her whole attitude and expression showed such absorption in her work that martha felt it would be absurd to imagine that she or her behavior could have any part in that beautiful lady’s consciousness.
as usual, when martha allowed herself to look at the princess, she forgot everything else. she had long ago had to make it a rule to place her easel so that she would be turned away from her enchantress while she was working; otherwise she could see and think only of her. at the present moment she was completely fascinated by the tall, strong figure, so firmly poised, with one foot advanced, and her body thrown backward from the slender waist, where a belt of old silver confined the folds of her red silk shirt-waist above the sweep of her skirt of dark green serge. this was her ordinary working-rig; and as she wore no apron, as most of the other students did, it was more or less streaked with paint. martha herself wore her calico apron religiously, and was always neatly clothed beneath it; but she would have protested utterly against seeing her neighbor in an apron. it would have looked so unprincesslike! she was very tall and straight, this princess, and “serene highness” seemed to martha to be written on every inch of her.
there was not much sociability among the students in the atelier. they came from many different countries, and spoke many different tongues; and they were such a mixture of aristocrats and plebeians—some were so afraid of patronizing and others of being patronized,—that the conditions generally were such as were opposed to much mixing. talking was forbidden during work-hours, except the little absolutely necessary whispering; and in the intermission at noon the princess always went away for lunch, and sometimes did not return. martha, too, went to her mother’s apartment for the midday meal, though nothing ever prevented her from returning. some of the students had chums, with whom they chatted glibly in the cloak-room; but as a rule, these intimacies had been formed outside.
martha keene was a girl who would never have made the first advance toward an acquaintance with any one; for, although she had passed her twentieth year, she was incorrigibly shy. this reserve of manner was so evident that it discouraged advances from others. she knew this and regretted it, but could not help it.
it had pleased martha very much when, on a single occasion, this wall of isolation which she had built around herself had been broken through by a little american chatterbox, who had rattled away to her for ten minutes one day as she was waiting for her carriage in the cloak-room. this had been soon after her entrance at etienne’s, and her voluble country-woman had vanished from the horizon the next day; but in that one talk she had got almost all the knowledge of the atelier which she possessed.
her informant had told her that the students were not supposed to inquire about one another at all, the ideal of the atelier being a place where high and low alike could lay aside their disabilities and get the benefits of the common workshop. she added that there had been several personages of importance studying there since she herself had been a student, but that she had always heard of it from the outside, and they had generally left before she had identified them. “i spotted the princess, though,” she had said. “as soon as i heard that there was a russian princess studying here, i picked her out. do you know which one she is?” martha had answered, “the lady in the red blouse”—a guess at once confirmed. “isn’t she stunning?” her companion had gone on; “i’m dying to speak to her! if she were not a princess, i’d have done it long ago. i can’t go the russian; but no doubt she speaks every language. russians always do.” at this point of the conversation the lady herself had come into the cloak-room. a neat french maid who was in waiting had come forward, and held out her lady’s wrap, a magnificent sable thing, in which the beautiful creature had quickly infolded herself, and left the room, the two girls meanwhile making a tremendous effort to cover their breathless interest by an air of unconsciousness.
ever since that day—indeed, even before it—martha had been a silent worshiper at the shrine of the princess. she had a passionate love of beauty, and her heart, for all her grave and shy exterior, was packed as full of romance as it could hold. the discovery that this beautiful being was a princess—and a russian princess, of all others—was meet food for this appetite for the romantic; and she dreamed by the hour about this young woman’s life, and wondered what it had been and was to be. she knew she could not be many years older than herself, and she wondered, with burning interest, whether she was or was not married. sometimes she would hold to one opinion for days, and then something—a mere turn of expression, perhaps—would convert her to the opposite one. she wanted her to be unmarried, so that she might be free to construct from her imagination a beautiful future for her; and yet she dreaded to find out that she was married. there was certainly a look about the princess which contradicted martha’s ideal of her as the possessor of a fair, unwritten life-page. martha had watched her hands to see if she wore a wedding-ring; but those extraordinarily beautiful hands were either loaded down with jeweled gauds of antique workmanship or else quite ringless. still, many married women were careless about wearing their wedding-rings, a thing which martha herself could not comprehend; but she felt that this wonderful creature was removed as far as possible from her in both actuality and ideas.
martha had heard the sound of the princess’s voice only once or twice, and on those occasions she had spoken french with what seemed to the american girl an absolutely perfect accent. once she had been near enough to hear a little talk between the princess and etienne, as he was criticizing the former’s work with rather more humanness, martha thought, than he showed to the students generally; and once or twice when the princess had been placed near the model’s little retiring-room, martha had had the joy of hearing her divinity give the summons, in the usual atelier jargon, “c’est l’heure!” it seemed to the girl a most lovable act of condescension on the part of her serene highness.
one day (it was the day after etienne had told her that her drawing was “not bad,” and the princess had smiled at her) martha was working away, when she became aware that an easel was being pushed into the unoccupied space at her right hand. she had known that some one would soon take possession of this place, and she did not even look round to see who it was. her whole attention was bent on making etienne see that his encouragement had yielded good fruit, even though she had made no verbal acknowledgment of it. she went on drawing, with intense concentration, until, weary at last, she put down her charcoal, and stood resting her arms, with her hands on her hips. as she finished her scrutiny of her work, and looked around, she started to discover that it was the princess who was seated at the easel next her own, and was looking full at her. as martha, confused and delighted, encountered that gaze, the beautiful lady’s lips parted in a friendly smile, and she whispered gently,
“bon jour.”
martha crimsoned with pleasure as she returned the greeting, and then both fell to work again. the princess was painting, laying on her color in a broad and daring style that almost frightened her neighbor. martha watched her furtively while she crumbled her bread, and pretended to be erasing and touching up certain points in her picture. it was a bewildering delight to her to stand so close to the princess and see her at work, and she was agreeably aware that the princess was also aware of her, and perhaps even pleased at their being together.
when the time came for the model to rest, and the quiet of the room was a little relieved by the whispered talk that sprang up among the students as they waited, martha felt that the princess had inclined toward her a little, and was looking at her work. she put down as childish the impulse that rushed up in her to cover the picture from sight, or to say how bad she knew it was, and she stood very still and very much embarrassed until the princess said again, in that exquisite utterance of french subtleties,
“c’est bien difficile, n’est-ce pas?”
martha answered her somehow—she never knew what.
when the model came back, and they began to work again, she felt that she had become part of a wonderful experience. she had never seen the princess talking to any one else, and, amazing and undeserved as the tribute was, she could not be mistaken in thinking that the lovely lady wished to know her, and perhaps to allow her the dear privilege of such intercourse as their atelier life permitted. she never expected it to go beyond that; but that was far more than anything she had imagined.
across one corner of her canvas martha’s name was scrawled in full, and she knew that the princess must have seen it. she looked to see if there was any signature upon the princess’s picture, and, as if interpreting her thought, her neighbor, with a brilliant smile, dipped her brush in vermilion, and wrote in a bold, strong hand the word “sonia.” this name (which martha did not know to be the russian abbreviation of sophia) seemed to the girl very odd and beautiful, and peculiarly appropriate to its possessor.
