Muriel decided: belonging to Sargent’s own moneyed set was not required. No, perhaps distinction rested more precisely in having first recognized the single major portrait artist of your own epoch; and then simply “arranging” (oh, what a sinking void our stalwart spinster felt at that term “arranging”) to be portrayed by that very painter. His immortality was assured, and yours with it, your tradition’s with it, and his, with Art’s own. Securing such an image would mean reinstating your family into that framing proscenial reality where it so plainly belonged, from which it had so cruelly toppled. One artful image would prove to the Sophy Brophy Armours of this world that your loved ones’ single mingy tragedy had been, if not averted, then transcended. It would reveal that there are deeper beauties stretched beyond one’s incidentally absent Physical Beauty. A Sargent portrait might tell you who you might, most favorably, have been. It would prove that your accustomed entrance remained the marble-arched, unnamed, Palladian front one—not the side alley’s green door under its wall-bolted bronze interdiction: DELIVERIES AND STAFF.

Such a quest for portraiture, permanence, might also offer some of the rushing pleasure that accompanied absolute usefulness. Muriel most longed for use; even the indignities of daily piano lessons were eased when she told herself, “I do not teach Armours. I teach Music.” All that practice, practice, practice. And then to leave behind no justifying performance! Surely that would be a double death.

And so, unusual for anyone on either side of my family, Muriel, the musical one, the practical one, gradually and then suddenly knew exactly what she wanted.

Past that, she began to understand all that she must sacrifice to get it. Nothing seemed too difficult. No social slight, no skipped meal, no finery forgone could compare with having glimpsed the justifying Eternal at the center of her dignity daily betrayed. Here in exile, in an Elba called Illinois, around the single silent chance, Miss Fraser’s life soon organized itself.

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