I set the white jug and two glasses on a tray, in case he chose to join her, and took them to the great hall. As I entered I bumped against Cornelia, who had been standing in the doorway. I managed to catch the jug, and the glasses clattered against my chest without breaking. Cornelia smirked and stepped out of my way.

Catharina was sitting at the table with her powder-brush and jar, her combs and jewelry box. She was wearing her pearls and her green silk dress, altered to cover her belly. I placed a glass near her and poured.

“Would you like some wine too, sir?” I asked, glancing up. He was leaning against the cupboard that surrounded the bed, pressed against the silk curtains, which I noticed for the first time were made of the same cloth as Catharina’s dress. He looked back and forth between Catharina and me. On his face was his painter’s look.

“Silly girl, you’ve spilled wine on me!” Catharina pushed away from the table and brushed at her belly with her hand. A few drops of red had splashed there.

“I’m sorry, madam. I’ll get a damp cloth to sponge it.”

“Oh, never mind. I can’t bear to have you fussing about me. Just go.”

I stole a look at him as I picked up the tray. His eyes were fixed on his wife’s pearl earring. As she turned her head to brush more powder on her face the earring swung back and forth, caught in the light from the front windows. It made us all look at her face, and reflected light as her eyes did.

“I must go upstairs for a moment,” he said to Catharina. “I won’t be long.”

That is it, then, I thought. He has his answer.

When he asked me to come to the studio the next afternoon, I did not feel excited as I usually did when I knew I was to sit for him. For the first time I dreaded it. That morning the clothes I washed felt particularly heavy and sodden, and my hands not strong enough to wring them well. I moved slowly between the kitchen and the courtyard, and sat down to rest more than once. Maria Thins caught me sitting when she came in for a copper pancake pan. “What’s the matter, girl? Are you ill?” she asked.

I jumped up. “No, madam. Just a little tired.”

“Tired, eh? That’s no way for a maid to be, especially not in the morning.” She looked as if she did not believe me.

I plunged my hands into the cooling water and pulled out one of Catharina’s chemises. “Are there any errands you would like me to run this afternoon, madam?”

“Errands? This afternoon? I don’t think so. That’s a funny thing to ask if you’re feeling tired.” She narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t in trouble, are you, girl? Van Ruijven didn’t catch you alone, did he?”

“No, madam.” In fact he had, just two days before, but I had managed to pull away from him.

“Has someone discovered you upstairs?” Maria Thins asked in a low voice, jerking her head up to indicate the studio.

“No, madam.” For a moment I was tempted to tell her about the earring. Instead I said, “I ate something that did not agree with me, that is all.”

Maria Thins shrugged and turned away. She still did not believe me, but had decided it did not matter.

That afternoon I plodded up the stairs, and paused before the studio door. This would not be like other times when I sat for him. He was going to ask me for something, and I was beholden to him.

I pushed open the door. He sat at his easel, studying the tip of one of his brushes. When he looked up at me I saw something I had never before seen in his face. He was nervous.

That was what gave me the courage to say what I said. I went to stand by my chair and placed my hand on one of the lion heads. “Sir,” I began, gripping the hard, cool carving, “I cannot do it.”

“Do what, Griet?” He was genuinely surprised.

“What you are going to ask me to do. I cannot wear it. Maids do not wear pearls.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head a few times. “How unexpected you are. You always surprise me.”

I ran my fingers around the lion’s nose and mouth and up its muzzle to its mane, smooth and knobbled. His eyes followed my fingers.

“You know,” he murmured, “that the painting needs it, the light that the pearl reflects. It won’t be complete otherwise.”

I did know. I had not looked at the painting long—it was too strange seeing myself—but I had known immediately that it needed the pearl earring. Without it there were only my eyes, my mouth, the band of my chemise, the dark space behind my ear, all separate. The earring would bring them together. It would complete the painting.

It would also put me on the street. I knew that he would not borrow an earring from van Ruijven or van Leeuwenhoek or anyone else. He had seen Catharina’s pearl and that was what he would make me wear. He used what he wanted for his paintings, without considering the result. It was as van Leeuwenhoek had warned me.

When Catharina saw her earring in the painting she would explode.

I should have begged him not to ruin me.

“You are painting it for van Ruijven,” I argued instead, “not for yourself. Does it matter so much? You said yourself that he would be satisfied with it.”

His face hardened and I knew I had said the wrong thing.

“I would never stop working on a painting if I knew it was not complete, no matter who was to get it,” he muttered. “That is not how I work.”

“No, sir.” I swallowed and gazed at the tiled floor. Stupid girl, I thought, my jaw tightening.

“Go and prepare yourself.”

Bowing my head, I hurried to the storeroom where I kept the blue and yellow cloths. I had never felt his disapproval so strongly. I did not think I could bear it. I removed my cap and, feeling the ribbon that tied up my hair was coming undone, I pulled it off. I was reaching back to gather up my hair again when I heard one of the loose floor tiles in the studio clink. I froze. He had never come into the storeroom while I was changing. He had never asked that of me.

I turned round, my hands still in my hair. He stood on the threshold, gazing at me.

I lowered my hands. My hair fell in waves over my shoulders, brown like fields in the autumn. No one ever saw it but me.

“Your hair,” he said. He was no longer angry.

At last he let me go with his eyes.

That evening I slipped from the house and found Pieter the son at one of the taverns where the butchers drank, near the Meat Hall. Ignoring the whistles and remarks, I went up to him and asked him to come with me. He set down his beer, his eyes wide, and followed me outside, where I took his hand and led him to a nearby alley. There I pulled up my skirt and let him do as he liked. Clasping my hands around his neck, I held on while he found his way into me and began to push rhythmically. He gave me pain, but when I remembered my hair loose around my shoulders in the studio, I felt something like pleasure too.

Afterwards, back at Papists’ Corner, I washed myself with vinegar.

When I next looked at the painting he had added a wisp of hair peeking out from the blue cloth above my left eye.

He did not come into the storeroom again to see my hair either.

He sat for a long time, mixing colors on his palette with his palette knife. There was red and ocher there, but the paint he was mixing was mostly white, to which he added daubs of black, working them together slowly and carefully, the silver diamond of the knife flashing in the grey paint.

“Sir?” I began.

He looked up at me, his knife stilled.

“I have seen you paint sometimes without the model being here. Could you not paint the earring without me wearing it?”

The palette knife remained still. “You would like me to imagine you wearing the pearl, and paint what I imagine?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked down at the paint, the palette knife moving again. I think he smiled a little. “I want to see you wear the earring.”

“But you know what will happen then, sir.”

“I know the painting will be complete.”

You will ruin me, I thought. Again I could not bring myself to say it. “What will your wife say when she sees the finished painting?” I asked instead, as boldly as I dared.

“She will not see it. I will give it directly to van Ruijven.” It was the first time he had admitted he was painting me secretly, that Catharina would disapprove.

“You need only wear it once,” he added, as if to placate me. “The next time I paint you I will bring it. Next week. Catharina will not miss it for an afternoon.”

“But, sir,” I said, “my ear is not pierced.”

He frowned slightly. “Well, then, you will need to take care of that.” This was clearly a woman’s detail, not something he felt he need concern himself with. He tapped the knife and wiped it with a rag. “Now, let us begin. Chin down a bit.” He gazed at me. “Lick your lips, Griet.”

I licked my lips.

“Leave your mouth open.”

I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

It was as if he had been in the alley with Pieter and me.

You have ruined me, I thought. I licked my lips again.

“Good,” he said.

If I could have chosen someone to do it for me, it would have been my mother. But she would never have understood, nor agreed to it without knowing why. And if she had been told why, she would have been horrified.