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Show 42 Hunt cast back, to a tiny two-story house near the coast in Rockport and a woman named Martha. It was a time before Leah, a May when he was only twenty-four and a young painter and admitting to being stupid about women even before he became stupid, had made it habit. He had been in Boston on a day bringing slides to galleries trying to interest them and was stopped at Schrafts having a cup of tea when he saw this woman enter, sit near him with a package from Bonwits. And Hunt had thought that she was of extraordinary beauty, in a hidden-lonely-sad way, an almost secret way, and he had looked and looked at her, unable to stop, unable to piece together in himself what it was about her, no within her, that so stirred him. And when he had risen to leave, he had stopped by her table. "Whatever that is that you're drinking . . . it's the most incredible green." "It's lime. It's a lime freeze," she had said. "Lime freeze," Hunt had repeated. "Yes." "Listen . . ." Hunt had leapt, one of the elements in his stupidity, "I'm a painter." And he had spilled three slides of portraits on the table before her. "Those are slides of my paintings. This is terrible light, but if you hold them up, you can get some idea. I'm a painter and I have to say I've been watching you, looking at you, I'm sorry, staring. -I'd like to paint you, if that would be possible. Here, on this napkin, let me write my name and address; I live up in Rockport. I'd be very happy to have you model for me. Pay. I'm not in the habit of this. Just snaring people. But . . . Do what you want. I'm sure you will. Next Wednesday would be |