Jane tugged Nero to a stop and quickly dismounted. She took hold of the reins of Emmeline’s horse and helped her down. Leading the two horses with one hand and letting Emmeline lean against her as they walked towards the frosty grass, Jane led her aunt to an iron bench set out under an ash tree. Here, Emmeline sat down and leaned forward, putting her head close to her knees. Afraid to let go of the horses in case they bolted, Jane could only stand close to her aunt and will her to recover. Nero threw his head up, jangling his bit, unhappy with the sudden stillness of everything, but Jane held tight to the reins.

‘I’m sorry …’ Emmeline whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Jane.’

‘No need for sorrow,’ said Jane. ‘Only the sorrow you feel. And how could you know when this would come upon you, even though the years pass? In my work at the Baths, I observe this all the time: the shock, perhaps long delayed, which suddenly arrives in the mind and lays the body low.’

That evening, after Emmeline had rested and recovered and drunk tea by the fire, she said to Jane: ‘I have always seen goodness in you, dearest Jane, but it is tempered by something else, something harsher and more determined. I don’t know what that harsh thing is, precisely, but I know how to find out. I would like to paint your portrait.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘You want to paint me in order to find out who I am?’

‘I know who I think you are,’ said Emmeline, ‘but now I feel that I do not know you right to your core.’

‘And supposing, in my core, I turn out to be somebody very wicked?’

‘Well, that would be interesting. Then, you might have to be restrained by some means, I suppose, but not by me because I know that restraint is never to your liking and I love you far too much to hurt you. Might we begin the portrait tomorrow?’

Jane wished to be standing, for the painting. She said to her aunt: ‘I don’t think you will see me correctly unless you depict my height.’

Emmeline regarded Jane closely for a long time. As always, when she began a picture, some words of Jocelyn Hulton’s echoed in her mind. ‘For your female sitters, call upon myth,’ he had said. ‘Think of Greek goddesses. For women like to feel immortal. You must make them look as though they will be worshipped for all time.’

It came to Emmeline that there was already something of the ‘immortal’ in Jane and all she had to do now was to capture it. She asked Jane to put on a white gown, as similar as possible to those she wore at the Baths, and positioned her in front of one of the tall windows which gave onto the small neglected garden of the narrow house.

The visible portion of sky was blank and pale, and at once, Emmeline could see how the tones of this picture might help suggest the ‘immortal essence’ of Jane Adeane: a study of differing shades of white – white sky, a lace of white frost on a briar patch, white face and hands and neck, white cotton fabric – all suggesting an affinity with a condition of a previously unblemished whiteness. But what would make it strong and real would be the discoloration upon that very whiteness, showing how time and texture and season cast shadows on all things and rendered them unique and grave, but yet suggesting here the stoicism of the sitter in the face of time and decay.