(In fact—hadn’t he been a protégé of her husband’s? Hadn’t they been traveling together in the Orient when Flaxman died?)

It was rumored—

But one thing was certain, Sheila Trask led a self-destructive life. She had affairs, as everyone knew, with other artists—“people like herself.”

Sheila’s studio was on the second floor of a converted carriage house set a little distance behind the main house. It was spacious, airy, attractive in its design—the skylight overhead, one wall made of plate glass and brick—but singularly cluttered, really messy, to Monica’s way of thinking. Painting equipment, old canvases, sheets of newspaper underfoot, dirty cups and plates and silverware, ashtrays unemptied for days, trash cartons unemptied for weeks, soiled articles of clothing and paint-stained towels hanging from the backs of chairs. . . . The place smelled harshly of paint, turpentine, cigarette smoke, sweat, Sheila’s frank undisguised sweat: and fresh-brewed coffee: and something else, something sweet, slightly rancid, which Monica could not define. Though she had been rather shocked by her initial visit to the studio she soon came to like it very much. The mess, the odors, Sheila Trask standing or crouching before one of her canvases . . . Sheila Trask allowing her entrance, allowing her the privilege of being a witness. . . .

Even her friend’s moods interested her. (Sometimes Sheila was excited, almost wildly elated—sometimes she was irritable, angry with herself, contemptuous at the “progress” she was making.) Even the fact, disconcerting at first, that Sheila could ignore her, look through her, forget her for minutes at a time. They might have been old, intimate companions, even sisters. . . . In the final wretched year of her marriage Monica and her husband had moved through their lives like sleepwalkers, systematically ignoring each other, courteous, cautious, ceaselessly apprehensive. They shared a common space and a span of precisely calibrated time. Monica had not existed for her husband, nor had he existed for her: and by degrees Monica had slipped into a near-perpetual trance of hatred, knowing herself invisible, obliterated, no longer there. . . . But it was different with Sheila Trask. It was entirely different. In fact it seemed to Monica an undeserved privilege, a gift of sorts, that she might be, though physically present, physically forgotten.

But if she sometimes whispered that she’d leave, she’d call a little later that day, Sheila often turned and said: “No. Wait. I’m almost finished.” Her voice might be strident and peremptory, it might be almost apologetic, even pleading. “No wait—I’m almost finished.”

Monica thought about Sheila. She thought about “Sheila Trask.”