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Pauline. They were used to my sulks. They returned to their dancing, which required a lot of intricate work with scarves. It was hard not to get them tangled up. In fact, the dance had to be interrupted frequently for untangling and arguments over who was to blame. I half-listened to them as I watched the people passing below.
    Fortunately for me, the street on which we lived was a very busy one. There was always someone interesting passing by. I watched a woman with a velvet cloak pulled tight around her throat step into the apothecary. I recognized her as a well-known soprano. I wondered if something was wrong with her voice. When she came out a few minutes later she was reading the label on the back of a small bottle as she walked. She nearly collided with two doctors with leather satchels and worried expressions. I saw one of the drunken students that the artist Gustav Klimt had drawn. He no longer looked drunk, but his hair was very messy and he was quite pale and in a rush. He dashed past my building and out of sight.
    Just as Helene was saying that Pauline looked like a goat and Pauline was about to cry because she did a little, with her close-set brown eyes and long face, I saw something I couldn’t believe. Someone was at the door. It was a small man carrying a valise in one hand and a cane with a glittering handle in the other. He set the case down and rang our bell. Then he took off his hat to let the wind ruffle his hair, and he looked up, directly at me.
    It was Gustav Klimt.
    He smiled and bowed to me with a flourish of his hat. I nearly fell off the window seat in my haste to hide. Pauline and Helene stopped dancing.
    “What?” Helene said.
    “He’s here,” I said.
    “Who?” said Pauline. She gasped when I told her.
    I didn’t tell them about the bow. I don’t know why. It was something special that set me apart. “But what’s he doing here?” said Helene.
    No one ever came to our house except the doctor. It was puzzling why this artist we’d never heard of until a few weeks ago was now standing at our door. We waited, peering around the curtains. When the door opened and Gustav Klimt disappeared into the building, we crept into the hall and leaned over the banister, straining to hear.
    Mother took him into the parlor, leaving the valise and the cane in the hall, a sure sign that he was staying awhile.
    Then we ran up the stairs and into our room as fast as we could, because Mother had come out of the parlor and was coming up the stairs. We stripped off the evening dresses and hid them in the armoire. By the time she arrived we were in our regular clothes and arranged in a slightly breathless tableau: Helene and I looking out the window, Pauline reading at the desk.
    She frowned at us and said, “It’s no good trying to look innocent. Your faces are too pink.” We weren’t sure whether she meant that she knew about the dresses, or knew that we knew about Klimt, so we all tried to look chastened but not say anything to give ourselves away.
    “What is it Mother?” asked Pauline, not very convincingly. “We heard the bell.”
    “Mr. Klimt is here.” Our mother was fond of dramatic pauses. Helene couldn’t wait.
    “Why? Why is he here?”
    “Your father has asked him to draw your portraits.”
     
    We stared at one another. Pauline looked horrified, but Helene looked as excited as I felt.
    “Don’t keep the poor man waiting down there,” said Mother. “Straighten yourselves up, put on your school blouses, and come downstairs.”
    “Our school blouses?” said Helene.
    “That’s what your father wants.”
    I nearly cried. Our school blouses were thin white cotton, with a plain neck and a bib-like appendage hanging over the chest. The bib-like appendage was embroidered with cheap floss because we’d been forced to do it ourselves. Pauline’s had turned out all right, but Helene’s, and especially mine, were poorly done. It was like performing at a dancing recital in my nightgown. I