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By tacit, rather than explicit, agreement, they also do not speak of Gène or Suzanne.

When together in society, they are friends and in-laws, bonded by family and painting, nothing more.

When they are alone, the story is different, delightfully and dishonorably different.

They’re aware what they’re doing is unpardonable, completely unfair to their spouses, yet they are unable to stop.

Berthe sometimes thinks of it as a disease that has invaded her body, one whose only cure is to embrace the initial source of the illness, rekindling the ailment. Ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail.

The bande works in édouard’s studio twice a week, and Berthe paints at home the rest of the time.

As much as she enjoys being with the others, and with édouard, even if they must stay at a distance from each other, she’s grateful for the time alone.

She’s attempting something she doesn’t want anyone to see, a forbidden picture.

The one she envisioned while looking out the parlor window last winter.

Now that it’s spring, she spends many afternoons in the park across the street with her drawing pad and pencils, pretending to sketch the lush gardens and lawns, the deeply shadowed tree-lined paths, but these are not her subjects.

She especially likes to sit on a bench next to the lawn-bowling green, a meticulously manicured grass rink where teams of men, women, and sometimes children play boules.

Berthe has participated in boules on private estates, but no woman of her circle would ever consider playing in a public place.

The game involves rolling wooden balls at a target in an effort to place your ball closer to the target than your opponents’.

But it isn’t lawn bowling she’s interested in.

It’s the people she’s not supposed to be drawing.

Boules is a comradely sport, with teams urging on their own players while cheerfully heckling the opposing ones.

Families picnic alongside the rink, and spectators gather on benches to applaud their favorites.

There’s verve, color, enjoyment, people of every type and class.

A scene embodying la Ville Lumière, the City of Light.

Pure and alive, bursting with joy and laughter.

She will not allow the constraints of tradition to stop her from capturing it.

Her picture takes on the form of a rough triangle, the game being played closer to one corner, a picnicking family on the grass near another, a young couple sitting improperly close at the far end.

The rink is a deep velvety green, the trees darken as they climb a distant hill, and the women’s bright dresses throw sparkles of color and light.

The male players are a little rough-looking, wearing outfits that seem more fitting to the privacy of home, and this enhances the spontaneity.

The family is jolly, although some of the women’s attire is a bit risqué, and the couple is brazenly enraptured. She’ll call it Parisian Summer .

Over the weeks, she fills two sketchbooks with drawings, enough to begin painting, but she hasn’t yet put brush to canvas.

It’s a bold step, subjects and themes well beyond her reach, not only men to whom she is not related but those of a lower class.

And what will she do with it when it’s finished?

Should she show it to her friends? Degas will be startled but encouraging, as he enjoys nothing more than pushing boundaries, and while the others will be more cautious, she believes they will ultimately support her efforts.

But would any of them believe the picture fitting to include in their next exhibition?

The contempt and disrespect that will fall on a woman for creating a painting that includes crowds such as this will make the ridicule she received after their first two shows seem like praise.

How can she ask them to consider such a thing?

And yet, just as she can’t resist édouard, knowing the involvement is madness, she can’t resist Parisian Summer .

The painting comes quickly, as if it already knows what it should be.

No need for watercolors or pastels; she begins with oils.

Perhaps because she doesn’t believe anyone beyond her small circle of artists will view it, she doesn’t fret the way she usually does.

She doesn’t pace in front of the canvas for hours, staring and feeling dispirited, wondering what’s wrong with it, what she should do next.

Instead, she allows the sweeping strokes to flow, the people to emerge from her brush, the light to dance.

She keeps her studio door locked while she’s working, lest the maid or the cook, or, worse, Cornélie or Gène, enter without knocking.

And when she’s finished for the day, she drapes it with a drop cloth to keep it hidden.

When she lifts the cloth in the morning, her heart pounds as it does when she first catches sight of édouard.

The picture is only half finished, but it already glows, each person, each conversation seemingly alive.

What is the mother saying to the little boy who just tossed his half-eaten sandwich in the picnic basket?

Is that girl aware of what she’s getting herself into with that handsome and lustful young man?

Berthe knows the painting will be good. Better than good.

And she begins spending both days and evenings with her new love, Parisian Summer .

Late one night, Gène comes into the studio wearing his nightclothes. “You will make yourself ill, my dear,” he says. “It’s after midnight, and you must—” He stares at the painting, then over at her, and then at the painting again.

Berthe doesn’t move. How could she have forgotten to lock the door?

“What is this?”

She tries to gauge his frame of mind. While Gène is far from a serious artist, he does paint, and perhaps he’ll understand the urge to try something novel, something daring. “It’s new.”

“I see that.” His voice is flat. “And you believe this subject matter is proper for you to paint?”

“I, uh, I wanted to try something different,” she mumbles, as if she’s a naughty girl being scolded by her mother. But what exactly has she done wrong?

Gène lifts the canvas from the easel. “This is impossible,” he declares in a voice more forceful than she’s ever heard him use. “You cannot finish it, may not finish it. It’s dangerous enough in the state it’s in.”

“Dangerous? An afternoon of games in the park?”

“You know the rules as well as I do. This is not for a woman to paint. And if you refuse to acknowledge the risk this poses or, worse, try to complete it, then it must be destroyed immediately. You are my wife, and I will not allow you to bring shame on yourself or on our families.”

Berthe can’t believe the quiet man she married is taking such an overly zealous stance. “Gène,” she says, trying for a softer tone. “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that. It’s just a picture.”

“It’s not just a picture! It is a grave threat. Blasphemy, even. It’s my duty to protect you from harm, and that is exactly what I plan to do.”

“I do not need your protection.”

“Yes, you do. This is my decision, and you will do as I tell you. Your mother has already taken to her bed in anguish over the reaction to the auction, by the aspersions cast against you, against all of us. How do you think she would respond to the dishonor and scandal a painting such as this will bring?”

He’s not saying anything she hasn’t thought before, but the vehemence with which he states it, this unexpectedly hard turn from a man she considered soft, throws her off balance.

“Look at it, Gène. I implore you. It’s good, maybe the best I’ve ever done.

What’s so wrong with a picture of people enjoying themselves in a public park?

It’s not as if they’re naked. Why is this disgraceful?

I’m an artist, and I have the right to paint what I want! ”

“You know the answer to those questions.” He rests Parisian Summer on the floor, but he still holds on to it. “Don’t pretend you don’t, Berthe. You’re not a foolish woman.”

“The rules are foolish, not me!”

“The facts are the facts, whether you like them or not.” Gène lifts the canvas and carries it from the studio.

She follows him into the hallway. “What are you doing?”

He walks into the kitchen, where the cook has left a low fire burning in the open hearth. Still holding the painting with one hand, he throws a bundle of kindling and three logs on the embers, then uses the wrought-iron poker to accelerate the flames.

Berthe tries to wrestle the painting from him, but his grip on the canvas is fierce. “You say you love me,” she cries. “And if you do, you won’t take something so dear from me.”

Gène doesn’t say anything. He just prods the logs. One falls onto the kindling and bursts into flame with a loud pop. Sparks fly in all directions. Another log catches, and the blaze climbs higher.

“No,” she pleads, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s not yours to destroy!”

He drops the poker, grasps Parisian Summer , and throws it into the fire.

Berthe lunges for it, but he pulls her back from the flames, holds her in place. She struggles against him, but she’s unable to free herself.

“Take it out!” she screams as the fire greedily eats at the canvas, abetted by the oil paint. “Please! You can still save it.” But she sees this is not so, and watches as the canvas blackens, strips of it falling into the flames, leaving only a wooden rectangle to burn.

Gène finally releases her, and for the first time since he walked into her studio, his face softens. “I’m sorry, Berthe. You’re right that it was a lovely painting. But I am right that no one can ever see it.”