Six truly happy weeks followed that first performance, six weeks when he had her all to himself. They celebrated her reviews in a basement cafe near the university, and at first she had been quite modest. She claimed that her audience had only loved her because she had taken off her clothes, and then they had only wanted her because they could not have her.

He felt closest to her in the casual moments: dozing by the window on a cold day, kneeling on a bed to brush her hair. He usually worked in the early mornings, doing sketches of her sleeping in a tangle of sheets. In the late afternoons they would walk to the river, to a special place where the currents were particularly deep and inviting. In the fall there would also be chestnuts here, but by that time she would be gone, leaving him with his drawings and a pocketwatch . . .

"Darling, I have a surprise for you," she said.

"Surprise?"

"A gift."

It was a Sunday and still early. He had fallen asleep the night before after three or four glasses of rum. She laid a tiny box on the mattress and told him to open it. Inside he found the watch, thin gold and engraved: Forever.

"It's beautiful, Margaretha."

"Yes, but now you'll have to think of me whenever you want to know the time."

Except that six months later the mainspring broke. Never mind. He would think of her in all those timeless moments.

In a way it seemed that every day had been a little timeless through that March and early April. She danced twice more before the month had ended, first at the home of a shipping magnate, then again at the Trocadero. On both occasions Gray met her later in a courtyard, when she smelled of cigarettes and cheap perfume. As always after dancing she was desperately hungry for simple food: sausages and beer, hard cheese and potatoes. Then too, after taking off her clothes for strangers, she always wanted him to watch her undress.

Eventually, as a consequence of her growing notoriety, even Gray had a minor victory: that first desperate portrait of her sold for seven hundred francs. The work had been hanging in a window of a Montmartre gallery for more than a month when suddenly a buyer appeared out of nowhere on an otherwise empty afternoon . . .

“Nicky” she called. “Nicky, come here. I want you to meet someone.”

It was a Friday and a relatively modest affair at the home of an American patron. He and Margaretha had arrived a little late. As usual, he gravitated to a corner with a cigarette and a glass of dry sherry. While across the room Margaretha had been clinging to the arm of a lanky French officer.

"Look who I've found, Nicky. The gentleman who bought your portrait of me . . . Colonel Rolland Michard!"