In strode a man who seemed the hired and presentable fellow who would, in turn, introduce some eccentric disheveled artist. Muriel felt relieved to recognize, via a self-portrait reproduced two inches square, Mr. Sargent himself. Austere, tall, and impeccable as some bank trust officer in a three-piece black suit, he wore the simplest of watch chains. And yet he seemed to have pop-eyes and a beard that claimed too much of his neck; he was not nearly so handsome as her papa. Singer Sargent spoke in a ripened Anglicized American accent. His manners were exemplary, if a bit glassy and automatic. Muriel had warned her less experienced sister not to let on that they’d sailed precisely to beseech Maestro for a sitting. And when he perfunctorily asked what had brought them abroad, Muriel answered a bit too loudly, “The churches.”

“A worthy pursuit.—I am expecting, I fear, a German couple to join us. Perhaps they’ve been delayed. Was your crossing difficult?” And you felt he had asked this of more than a few other, earlier Americans.

Muriel was candid in explaining about the runaway silver serving-cart that, in dancing a sickening reel from table to table, had sent the few remaining diehards herding to the rail. “We determined not to be sick and, in deciding, seemed to make it so.” She wondered if she’d been too explicit when the painter saw fit to quote a limerick he admitted had become a recent “craze” of his, a ditty employed to amuse such fidgety children as sat for him.

There was a young lady of Spain
Who often was sick on a train
Not once and again
But again and again
And again and again and again.

There was laughter, relaxation. “I am especially susceptible to your watercolors, sir. And it is, I believe, for that medium, as well as your oil portraits, that posterity will note you. Do you use both mediums in a single studio? Might I be bold enough to see where you manage all you so wondrously manage?”

He nodded and led them down a series of dark halls. “Chicago,” he said aloud. “There’s a Mrs. Armour whose picture I believe I once did.”

“Yes, I see Mrs. Armour now and again. And—come to think on it—again and again and again.”

He laughed, half-turning to reconsider his visitor. “I believe she was in the theater, before?” and his tone was so assured and invited such fun.

Muriel, quite primed to use Fauré’s celestial Requiem as her impending topic, could hardly believe she was gossiping with Singer Sargent about the woman who paid her one dollar per hour. “Not to put too fine a point upon it,” Muriel set forth, “but Mrs. Maitlandt Armour was, one hears, Sophy Brophy of Gerhardt Raymond’s Variety Beauties. I’m afraid there’s a slightly malicious story about her, not that she’s fully to blame. You doubtless know about her inviting Paderewski to play after dinner?” If John Sargent had heard, he was gracious in pretending otherwise.