Chap­ter XXI opens with Anne posi­tioned com­fort­ably on the gra­nary floor, her pos­ture both relaxed and delib­er­ate as she pos­es for Gombauld’s brush. The old gra­nary, ele­vat­ed on squat stone pil­lars, creaks faint­ly under the still­ness of the after­noon. Below, white ducks glide through the grass with absent-mind­ed pur­pose, their peace momen­tar­i­ly dis­turbed by the pair above. Gom­bauld paints in bursts of irri­ta­tion, over­whelmed not by the tech­ni­cal chal­lenge but by the lay­ered ten­sion Anne intro­duces sim­ply by being her­self. Her sub­tle expres­sions, the way her body reclines with­out effort, all seem designed to provoke—not seduc­tion exact­ly, but a con­fi­dent dis­play of emo­tion­al dis­tance. For every line Gom­bauld lays down, he seems to wres­tle more with what isn’t said than with what is in front of him.

Anne, as muse, dis­rupts as much as she inspires. Her pres­ence doesn’t offer the still­ness artists typ­i­cal­ly crave; instead, it teas­es contradictions—at once avail­able and remote, play­ful and opaque. Gom­bauld, who entered the ses­sion believ­ing he could cap­ture her, finds him­self unrav­el­ing. His irri­ta­tion man­i­fests in terse com­ments and frus­trat­ed strokes of paint, but Anne deflects these out­bursts with light sar­casm, her voice soft yet edged. She doesn’t deny her effect on him but nei­ther does she admit to any intent. The inter­ac­tion slow­ly becomes a con­test of perception—one try­ing to pin mean­ing down, the oth­er slip­ping from def­i­n­i­tion like light off glass. It’s a dynam­ic steeped not just in flir­ta­tion, but in a deep­er com­men­tary on roles and expec­ta­tions between men and women.

Their con­ver­sa­tion shifts from artis­tic process to per­son­al jabs, where accu­sa­tions of flir­ta­tion and manip­u­la­tion sur­face. Gom­bauld, trapped in his own pro­ject­ed nar­ra­tive, accus­es Anne of lead­ing him on through behav­ior she insists was noth­ing but nat­ur­al friend­li­ness. She retal­i­ates not with apolo­gies but by inter­ro­gat­ing the assump­tions behind his frus­tra­tions. Anne chal­lenges the notion that every woman’s charm must be for someone’s con­sump­tion, demand­ing that her iden­ti­ty not be reduced to a reac­tion to some­one else’s desire. In this argu­ment, Gombauld’s paint­ing becomes more than a canvas—it’s a bat­tle­field, with each stroke echo­ing a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion, and each pause weight­ed by unsaid truths.

As the ten­sion builds, the por­trait slow­ly shifts in tone. The ver­sion of Anne on the can­vas no longer match­es the woman in front of him. She appears list­less, pas­sive, and indifferent—qualities that may reflect more of Gombauld’s own frus­tra­tions than of Anne her­self. He has unin­ten­tion­al­ly paint­ed a fan­ta­sy of resent­ment rather than a record of real­i­ty. The real Anne sits vibrant and sharp, every response laced with qui­et asser­tion. The gap between image and pres­ence grows, reflect­ing how desire and mis­un­der­stand­ing dis­tort rela­tion­ships. Gom­bauld con­tin­ues paint­ing, but the art becomes more about resolv­ing his inter­nal con­fu­sion than hon­or­ing Anne’s com­plex­i­ty.

Their ver­bal exchange con­tin­ues, but with a soft­en­ing edge as both begin to rec­og­nize the stale­mate. Anne, though still defend­ing her inde­pen­dence, lets some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty slip. Gom­bauld, though wound­ed, tries to sal­vage some­thing hon­est from the encounter. Yet no clear res­o­lu­tion is reached. Their roles remain ambiguous—more than friends, less than lovers, locked in a push-pull that nei­ther seems ready to define or dis­solve. As the after­noon sun shifts and shad­ows stretch along the gra­nary walls, the moment between them lingers. The silence that fol­lows their exchange doesn’t feel emp­ty, but suspended—like the space between brush­strokes before mean­ing set­tles in.

Beneath them, the ducks return to their usu­al rhythm, glid­ing across the grass with instinc­tive calm. Their indif­fer­ence stands in qui­et con­trast to the tan­gled emo­tions unfold­ing above. In many ways, they serve as a final image—a life led with­out over­think­ing, untouched by the chaos of inter­pre­ta­tion or the bur­dens of self-aware­ness. Mean­while, Anne and Gom­bauld remain stuck in the human loop of try­ing to define the unde­fin­able. The chap­ter ends not with res­o­lu­tion but with a sub­tle shift—an aware­ness that nei­ther por­trait nor pas­sion will offer clar­i­ty today. What lingers is a les­son in com­plex­i­ty: that the desire to pos­sess or inter­pret anoth­er per­son often says more about us than it does about them.