My mother indicated Papa’s leather chair for Mr. Lanman to sit in, as easily as if it were only another chair. I took my accustomed place at my mother’s side, a bit overwhelmed by our configuration, for we were exactly paired: The mother and the son faced the mother and the daughter. Mrs. Lanman broke the awkwardness, and Mama’s ready answer bespoke a genuine willingness in her, an active part, I had not seen for months. The two were shortly engaged in a series of comparisons between this spring and the last, Mrs. Lanman insisting that she had not seen the like of this one for harsh and unforgiving weather.

Mr. Lanman gazed at the painting hung in the alcove behind my chair.

“Would you like to see it, Mr. Lanman?” I asked.

“Very much.”

We rose and drew into the alcove. And suddenly, the evening of Mrs. Strong’s dance flashed before my eyes, stopping at the moment when this man beside me had come up to speak to Papa, and what had Papa said to him then? With Jonathan Lanman before me, I could not remember, and despite myself, I felt tears well up at this lapse in my own memory.

“This is exquisite.” Mr. Lanman had stepped quite close to examine it, his whole form leaning toward the small painting. I blinked back my tears.

“Yes, Papa bought it for Mama while on their honeymoon in London; I don’t believe Papa imagined the painter would become so notorious, but the curious mood in it always beckoned to my father.”

“He had a good eye.”

Yes, I agreed silently. We turned back to the Mariana, where a young woman in deep blue velvet stood at her window, stretching out the stiffness of an afternoon spent at her needlework in front of the casement. In glorious disarray, several autumn leaves had fallen in onto her embroidered panel of flowers; and upon her face as she regarded the out-of-doors lay a kind of melancholic apprehension, a beautiful melancholy nonetheless, as if she has just then understood something, something grand. Here was the portrait of a lady thinking, in luxuriant privacy—and yet, she had been watched: She had been caught, for Mr. Millais had rendered her mood too exactly to have imagined it.

“Do you, ever wish that one’s life might look more like this?” I asked his black back.

“One’s life?” He turned to regard me.

“Yes. To live amidst such abundance—and to be so thoughtfully understood by another being—to have one’s sadness appear to be so—”

Full! I finished to myself. I had faltered beneath his gaze. Foolish, foolish to speak such thoughts aloud.

“Miss Thomas, you begin to sound like Walter Pater.” He was smiling. That was good then.

“Walter Pater? Is he a friend of yours?”