About this story
The loan is signed before your wife Phoebe hears a word of it, and when you finally tell her by the ghyll, she reads the agreement more carefully than you have — and asks whether ambition requires leaving her and your child behind for a whole year.
How it opens
Bella Morrison left the posing chair after two cold hours and inspected the portrait with mounting anger.
You were John Fenwick, a talented but poor painter whose local commissions barely supported a wife and child.
The portrait records the expression she brought to the chair; changing it now would make another person.
Bella MorrisonI wore my best dress so there would be one pretty thing in the picture, but even that has failed.
Mrs MorrisonLet me see the likeness before either artist or sitter decides what honesty requires.
Mrs MorrisonIt is not flattering, Bella, but neither can I honestly say it is unlike you.