I did not know whether it was something in the turpentine or a defect in the canvas, but the more I scrubbed the more that gangrene seemed to spread. I worked like a beaver to get it out, and yet the disease appeared to creep from limb to limb of the study before me.
Alarmed, I strove to arrest it, but now the colour on the breast changed and the whole figure seemed to absorb the infection as a sponge soaks up water. Vigorously I plied palette-knife, turpentine, and scraper, thinking all the time what a séance I should hold with Duval who had sold me the canvas; but soon I noticed that it was not the canvas which was defective nor yet the colours of Edward.
“It must be the turpentine,” I thought angrily, “or else my eyes have become so blurred and confused by the afternoon light that I can’t see straight.”
I called Tessie, the model. She came and leaned over my chair blowing rings of smoke into the air.
“What have you been doing to it?” she exclaimed.
“Nothing,” I growled, “it must be this turpentine!”
“What a horrible colour it is now,” she continued. “Do you think my flesh resembles green cheese?”
“No, I don’t,” I said angrily; “did you ever know me to paint like that before?”
“No, indeed!”
“Well, then!”
“It must be the turpentine, or something,” she admitted.
She slipped on a Japanese robe and walked to the window.