Soon it became easier to keep my eyes on his. He looked at me as if he were not seeing me, but someone else, or something else—as if he were looking at a painting.

He is looking at the light that falls on my face, I thought, not at my face itself. That is the difference.

It was almost as if I were not there. Once I felt this I was able to relax a little. As he was not seeing me, I did not see him. My mind began to wander—over the jugged hare we had eaten for dinner, the lace collar Lisbeth had given me, a story Pieter the son had told me the day before. After that I thought of nothing. Twice he got up to change the position of one of the shutters. He went to his cupboard several times to choose different brushes and colors. I viewed his movements as if I were standing in the street, looking in through the window.

The church bell struck three times. I blinked. I had not felt so much time pass. It was as if I had fallen under a spell.

I looked at him—his eyes were with me now. He was looking at me. As we gazed at each other a ripple of heat passed through my body. I kept my eyes on his, though, until at last he looked away and cleared his throat.

“That will be all, Griet. There is some bone for you to grind upstairs.”

I nodded and slipped from the room, my heart pounding. He was painting me.

“Back from my face, sir?” I repeated dumbly, and regretted it. He preferred me not to speak, but to do as he said. If I did speak, I should say something worth the words.

He did not answer. I pulled the side of my cap that was closest to him back from my cheek. The starched tip grazed my neck.

“More,” he said. “I want to see the line of your cheek.”

I hesitated, then pulled it back further. His eyes moved down my cheek.

“Show me your ear.”

I did not want to. I had no choice.

I felt under the cap to make sure no hair was loose, tucking a few strands behind my ear. Then I pulled it back to reveal the lower part of my ear.

The look on his face was like a sigh, though he did not make a sound. I caught a noise in my own throat and pushed it down so that it would not escape.

“Your cap,” he said. “Take it off.”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“Please do not ask me to, sir.” I let the cloth of the cap drop so that my ear and cheek were covered again. I looked at the floor, the grey and white tiles extending away from me, clean and straight.

“You do not want to bare your head?”

“No.”

“Yet you do not want to be painted as a maid, with your mop and your cap, nor as a lady, with satin and fur and dressed hair.”

I did not answer. I could not show him my hair. I was not the sort of girl who left her head bare.

He shifted in his chair, then got up. I heard him go into the storeroom. When he returned, his arms were full of cloth, which he dropped in my lap.

“Well, Griet, see what you can do with this. Find something here to wrap your head in, so that you are neither a lady nor a maid.” I could not tell if he was angry or amused. He left the room, shutting the door behind him.

I sorted through the cloth. There were three caps, all too fine for me, and too small to cover my head fully. There were pieces of cloth, left over from dresses and jackets Catharina had made, in yellows and browns, blues and greys.

I did not know what to do. I looked around as if I would find an answer in the studio. My eyes fell on the painting of The Procuress —the young woman’s head was bare, her hair held back with ribbons, but the old woman wore a piece of cloth wrapped around her head, crisscrossing in and out of itself. Perhaps that is what he wants, I thought. Perhaps that is what women who are neither ladies nor maids nor the other do with their hair.

I chose a piece of brown cloth and took it into the storeroom, where there was a mirror. I removed my cap and wound the cloth around my head as best I could, checking the painting to try to imitate the old woman’s. I looked very peculiar.

I should let him paint me with a mop, I thought. Pride has made me vain.

When he returned and saw what I had done, he laughed. I had not heard him laugh often—sometimes with the children, once with van Leeuwenhoek. I frowned. I did not like being laughed at.

“I have only done what you asked, sir,” I muttered.

He stopped chuckling. “You’re right, Griet. I’m sorry. And your face, now that I can see more of it, it is—” He stopped, never finishing his sentence. I always wondered what he would have said.

He turned to the pile of cloth I had left on my chair. “Why did you choose brown,” he asked, “when there are other colors?”

I did not want to speak of maids and ladies again. I did not want to remind him that blues and yellows were ladies’ colors. “Brown is the color I usually wear,” I said simply.

He seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Tanneke wore blue and yellow when I painted her some years ago,” he countered.

“I am not Tanneke, sir.”

“No, that you certainly are not.” He pulled out a long, narrow band of blue cloth. “Nonetheless, I want you to try this.”

I studied it. “That is not enough cloth to cover my head.”

“Use this as well, then.” He picked up a piece of yellow cloth that had a border of the same blue and held it out to me.

Reluctantly I took the two pieces of cloth back to the storeroom and tried again in front of the mirror. I tied the blue cloth over my forehead, with the yellow piece wound round and round, covering the crown of my head. I tucked the end into a fold at the side of my head, adjusted folds here and there, smoothed the blue cloth round my head, and stepped back into the studio.

He was looking at a book and did not notice as I slipped into my chair. I arranged myself as I had been sitting before. As I turned my head to look over my left shoulder, he glanced up. At the same time the end of the yellow cloth came loose and fell over my shoulder.

“Oh,” I breathed, afraid that the cloth would fall from my head and reveal all my hair. But it held—only the end of the yellow cloth dangled free. My hair remained hidden.

“Yes,” he said then. “That is it, Griet. Yes.”

But he would guess. I did not think I could sit with him looking at me day after day without guessing that I had looked at the painting. I could not hide things from him. I did not want to.

I was reluctant, too, to discover how it was that he saw me. It was better to leave that a mystery.

The colors he asked me to mix gave no clues as to what he was doing. Black, ocher, lead white, lead-tin yellow, ultramarine, red lake—they were all colors I had worked with before, and they could as easily have been used for the concert painting.

It was unusual for him to work on two paintings at once. Although he did not like switching back and forth between the two, it did make it easier to hide from others that he was painting me. A few people knew. Van Ruijven knew—I was sure it was at his request that my master was making the painting. My master must have agreed to paint me alone so that he would not have to paint me with van Ruijven. Van Ruijven would own the painting of me.

I was not pleased by this thought. Nor, I believed, was my master.

Maria Thins knew about the painting as well. It was she who probably made the arrangement with van Ruijven. And besides, she could still go in and out of the studio as she liked, and could look at the painting, as I was not allowed to. Sometimes she looked at me sideways with a curious expression she could not hide.

I suspected Cornelia knew about the painting. I caught her one day where she should not be, on the stairs leading to the studio. She would not say why she was there when I asked her, and I let her go rather than bring her to Maria Thins or Catharina. I did not dare stir things up, not while he was painting me.

Van Leeuwenhoek knew about the painting. One day he brought his camera obscura and set it up so they could look at me. He did not seem surprised to see me sitting in my chair—my master must have warned him. He did glance at my unusual head cloth, but did not comment.

They took turns using the camera. I had learned to sit without moving or thinking, and without being distracted by his gaze. It was harder, though, with the black box pointed at me. With no eyes, no face, no body turned towards me, only a box and a black robe covering a humped back, I became uneasy. I could no longer be sure of how they were looking at me.

I could not deny, however, that it was exciting to be studied so intently by two gentlemen, even if I could not see their faces.

My master left the room to find a soft cloth to polish the lens. Van Leeuwenhoek waited until his tread could be heard on the stairs, then said softly, “You watch out for yourself, my dear.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You must know that he’s painting you to satisfy van Ruijven. Van Ruijven’s interest in you has made your master protective of you.”

I nodded, secretly pleased to hear what I had suspected.

“Do not get caught in their battle. You could be hurt.”

I was still holding the position I had assumed for the painting. Now my shoulders twitched of their own accord, as if I were shaking off a shawl. “I do not think he would ever hurt me, sir.”