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Felicity wanders over to some clay. "May I make a sculpture, Miss Moore?"
"If you wish, Miss Worthington. Ye gods, I don't know if I am holding class or the class is holding me." She hands Felicity a lump of clay for molding.
"To make certain the afternoon is an educational one after all," Miss Moore says, glancing at Cecily, "I shall read aloud from David Copperfield .Chapter One: 'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show'"
At the end of the hour, Miss Moore examines our paintings, murmuring both praise and correction. When she comes to my paintinga large, misshapen apple taking up the whole of the canvasshe purses her lips for what seems a long time. "How very modern, Miss Doyle."
Cecily lets out a sharp laugh when she sees it. "Is that sup' posed to be an apple?"
"Of course it's an apple, Cecily," Felicity snaps. "I think it's marvelous, Gem. Quite avant- garde ." I'm not satisfied. "It needs more light on the front to make it shiny. I keep adding white and yellow, but that only washes everything out."
"You need to add a bit of shadow back here." Miss Moore dips a brush in sepia and paints a curve along the outside edge of my apple. Immediately, the shine on the apple is apparent, and it looks much better. "The Italians call this chiaroscuro . It means the play of light and dark within a picture."
"Why couldn't Gemma simply add the white to make the apple shine?" Pippa asks.
"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
"What do you propose to call that?" Cecily's tone drips disdain.
" The Choke," I blurt out, surprising myself.
Miss Moore nods. "The fruit of knowledge. Most interesting, indeed."
"Do you mean as in Eve's apple? As in the Garden of Eden?" Elizabeth asks. She's diligently trying to add sepia shadows to her painting now, and it's making her fruit look bruised and ugly. But I'm not going to tell her that.
"Let's ask the artist. Is that what you intended, Miss Doyle?"
I have no idea what I meant, really. I fumble to make sense of it. "I suppose it's any choice to know more, to see beyond what's there."
Felicity throws me a conspiratorial glance.
Cecily shakes her head. "Well, it's not a very accurate name. Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent."
"Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to."
"And she lost paradise in the bargain. Not for me, thank you. I'd stay right there in the garden," Cecily says.
"That, too, is a choice," Miss Moore points out.
"A much safer one," Cecily argues.
"There are no safe choices, Miss Temple. Only other choices."
"Mama says that women were not meant to have too many choices. It overwhelms them." Pippa repeats this as if it's a lesson well taught. "That's why we're supposed to defer to our husbands."
"Every choice has consequences," Miss Moore says, sounding far away. Felicity picks the apple from the bowl and finds her bite mark. The sweet white meat has browned in the air. She sinks her teeth in and makes a clean new mark.
"Delicious," she says, her mouth juicy full.
Miss Moore comes back to us with a laugh. "I see Felicity doesn't complicate the matter with too much deliberation. She's a hawk, diving in."
"Eat or be eaten!" Felicity takes another mouthful.
I'm thinking of Sarah and Mary, wondering what horrible choice they made. Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to shatter the Order. And that leads me to the choice I made the day I ran from my mother in the marketplace. The choice that seems to have put everything in motion.
"What happens if your choice is misguided?" I ask, softly.
Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. "You must try to correct it."
