A month before he had asked me to come up to the studio.

“I will be in the attic,” I announced to the room that afternoon.

Tanneke did not look up from her sewing. “Put some more wood on the fire before you go,” she ordered.

The girls were working on their lace, overseen by Maertge and Maria Thins. Lisbeth had patience and nimble fingers, and produced good work, but Aleydis was still too young to manage the delicate weaving, and Cornelia too impatient. The cat sat at Cornelia’s feet by the fire, and occasionally the girl reached down and dangled a bit of thread for the creature to paw at. Eventually, she probably hoped, the cat would tear its claws through her work and ruin it.

After feeding the fire I stepped around Johannes, who was playing with a top on the cold kitchen tiles. As I left he spun it wildly, and it hopped straight into the fire. He began to cry while Cornelia shrieked with laughter and Maertge tried to haul the toy from the flames with a pair of tongs.

“Hush, you’ll wake Catharina and Franciscus,” Maria Thins warned the children. They did not hear her.

I crept out, relieved to escape the noise, no matter how cold it would be in the studio.

The studio door was shut. As I approached it I pressed my lips together, smoothed my eyebrows, and ran my fingers down the sides of my cheeks to my chin, as if I were testing an apple to see if it was firm. I hesitated in front of the heavy wooden door, then knocked softly. There was no answer, though I knew he must be there—he was expecting me.

It was the first day of the new year. He had painted the ground layer of my painting almost a month before, but nothing since—no reddish marks to indicate the shapes, no false colors, no overlaid colors, no highlights. The canvas was a blank yellowish white. I saw it every morning as I cleaned.

I knocked louder.

When the door opened he was frowning, his eyes not catching mine. “Don’t knock, Griet, just come in quietly,” he said, turning away and going back to the easel, where the blank canvas sat waiting for its colors.

I closed the door softly behind me, blotting out the noise of the children downstairs, and stepped to the middle of the room. Now that the moment had come at last I was surprisingly calm. “You wanted me, sir.”

“Yes. Stand over there.” He gestured to the corner where he had painted the other women. The table he was using for the concert painting was set there, but he had cleared away the musical instruments. He handed me a letter. “Read that,” he said.

I unfolded the sheet of paper and bowed my head over it, worried that he would discover I was only pretending to read an unfamiliar hand.

Nothing was written on the paper.

I looked up to tell him so, but stopped. With him it was often better to say nothing. I bowed my head again over the letter.

“Try this instead,” he suggested, handing me a book. It was bound in worn leather and the spine was broken in several places. I opened it at random and studied a page. I did not recognize any of the words.

He had me sit with the book, then stand holding it while looking at him. He took away the book, handed me the white jug with the pewter top and had me pretend to pour a glass of wine. He asked me to stand and simply look out the window. All the while he seemed perplexed, as if someone had told him a story and he couldn’t recall the ending.

“It is the clothes,” he murmured. “That is the problem.”

I understood. He was having me do things a lady would do, but I was wearing a maid’s clothes. I thought of the yellow mantle and the yellow and black bodice, and wondered which he would ask me to wear. Instead of being excited by the idea, though, I felt uneasy. It was not just that it would be impossible to hide from Catharina that I was wearing her clothes. I did not feel right holding books and letters, pouring myself wine, doing things I never did. As much as I wanted to feel the soft fur of the mantle around my neck, it was not what I normally wore.

“Sir,” I spoke finally, “perhaps you should have me do other things. Things that a maid does.”

“What does a maid do?” he asked softly, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows.

I had to wait a moment before I could answer—my jaw was trembling. I thought of Pieter and me in the alley and swallowed. “Sewing,” I replied. “Mopping and sweeping. Carrying water. Washing sheets. Cutting bread. Polishing windowpanes.”

“You would like me to paint you with your mop?”

“It’s not for me to say, sir. It is not my painting.”

He frowned. “No, it is not yours.” He sounded as if he were speaking to himself.

“I do not want you to paint me with my mop.” I said it without knowing that I would.

“No. No, you’re right, Griet. I would not paint you with a mop in your hand.”

“But I cannot wear your wife’s clothes.”

There was a long silence. “No, I expect not,” he said. “But I will not paint you as a maid.”

“What, then, sir?”

“I will paint you as I first saw you, Griet. Just you.”

He set a chair near his easel, facing the middle window, and I sat down. I knew it was to be my place. He was going to find the pose he had put me in a month before, when he had decided to paint me.

“Look out the window,” he said.

I looked out at the grey winter day and, remembering when I stood in for the baker’s daughter, tried not to see anything but to let my thoughts become quiet. It was hard because I was thinking of him, and of me sitting in front of him.

The New Church bell struck twice.

“Now turn your head very slowly towards me. No, not your shoulders. Keep your body turned towards the window. Move only your head. Slow, slow. Stop. A little more, so that—stop. Now sit still.”

I sat still.

At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up. Instead I studied his firm chin, his thin lips.

“Griet, you are not looking at me.”

I forced my gaze up to his eyes. Again I felt as if I were burning, but I endured it—he wanted me to.

Soon it became easier to keep my eyes on his. He looked at me as if he were not seeing me, but someone else, or something else—as if he were looking at a painting.

He is looking at the light that falls on my face, I thought, not at my face itself. That is the difference.

It was almost as if I were not there. Once I felt this I was able to relax a little. As he was not seeing me, I did not see him. My mind began to wander—over the jugged hare we had eaten for dinner, the lace collar Lisbeth had given me, a story Pieter the son had told me the day before. After that I thought of nothing. Twice he got up to change the position of one of the shutters. He went to his cupboard several times to choose different brushes and colors. I viewed his movements as if I were standing in the street, looking in through the window.

The church bell struck three times. I blinked. I had not felt so much time pass. It was as if I had fallen under a spell.

I looked at him—his eyes were with me now. He was looking at me. As we gazed at each other a ripple of heat passed through my body. I kept my eyes on his, though, until at last he looked away and cleared his throat.

“That will be all, Griet. There is some bone for you to grind upstairs.”

I nodded and slipped from the room, my heart pounding. He was painting me.

“ Pull your cap back from your face,” he said one day.

“Back from my face, sir?” I repeated dumbly, and regretted it. He preferred me not to speak, but to do as he said. If I did speak, I should say something worth the words.

He did not answer. I pulled the side of my cap that was closest to him back from my cheek. The starched tip grazed my neck.