She stood up, walked around to the easel, stared at her portrait for a moment, and did not speak. It wasn't much higher than my usual level, and I didn't expect her to praise it, because it wasn't a commendable work of her quality. However, the characteristics of portraiture itself limit more creativity and play.

All the painting supplies such as drawing boards, easels, and brushes are hers. We put everything in order, put her portrait on another easel, and put away her easel. She gathered her tools together and took them with her when she left the studio.

She and I sat with our backs to the radiator, and her portrait was placed across from us, right across from us.

We hadn't spoken for a long time, and it didn't look like we used to talk after we had finished drawing, and it seemed that we had exhausted everything we could talk about in the previous conversations. I think this situation is also due to the fact that she is about to leave school, her departure time is certain, and the precise time makes me feel infinitely urgent, and I think about better and more valuable topics, but because I feel that it is too important, I feel that any topic is too inconsequential, and it is difficult to make the last time seem more valuable.

"When are you leaving school?" she asked.

"After a while. I said. Since I first spoke to her in the library, I never thought about leaving school, at most I thought about looking for an internship. Now that I think about it, I have a default in my mind, as long as she is still in school, I must still be in school.

"For the sake of this painting, I have not washed this sweater. She said, "I wear it every time I paint, and I change it every other day." ”

She wore that black sweater every time she came to the studio, and I found out at first, thinking she washed it every other day, but today I found out that she hadn't washed it. I think it should be the temperature of winter, and washing it may not be able to dry.

She kept staring at her portrait, and after a while she said, "Give me this painting, let me keep it." ”

I didn't have any reason to refuse her: "Yes, then you can take it." ”

Generally speaking, portraiture has two purposes, one is that the model of the portrait is possessed. The model asked the painter to draw his portrait and make it for collection. There is also a kind of artist, who will take the initiative to find a model and paint a portrait of them, purely for artistic purposes.

If in the beginning, I painted her portrait only out of impulse, and I didn't think about the use of her portrait after painting. But since Mr. Ou proposed to buy this painting that time, I felt that I valued this painting so much, and I regarded it as the most important painting in my college career, far more than my graduation work. I even felt guilty about my previous idea that the painting had no purpose at all.

But I was glad when she offered to take it and keep it, and I believe she was doing it for my reasons, after all, it was not a painting of great artistic value, and she had only one purpose for collecting it, and that was that I had painted it—although she probably just regarded me as an ordinary friend.

When she left the studio that night, she took her painting tools with her, and the portrait was left to dry in the studio until it would dry completely in two days. She held a pen in her hand, the campus was very quiet in winter, the dim red street lamps dotted the clean roads, and the dormitory was closed for only ten minutes at that time, and there was no one on the road except the two of us.

"I'm going to take your paintings. She said, "Don't be angry." ”

"How so. I said.

"I'll give you something too. She said.

On the nights when we painted her portrait, we would all walk back down the same road like this. It's a seven-minute walk from the studio building to the dormitory, with a little north and then a turn to the west. The north-south section of the road is in the teaching area, and there are very few people after half past nine in the evening. It is rare to see students walking alone on the road so late, and occasionally I see couples walking arm in arm.

The winter wind would blow her hair up and fly in the air, and she would sometimes wear that white fluffy hat and sometimes a mask. When she wore a mask, she only showed her two eyes and forehead when she looked at it from the side, and her eyes were beautiful, which looked more beautiful than when she was not wearing a mask.

I try to keep a good distance from her, not too far away from her, and not so much that I can't squeeze her. My hand occasionally touched her hand as I swung back and forth, brushing the back of her hand and sliding softly past, and I felt a hint of joy and worry in my heart, afraid that she would think I was touching her hand on purpose. Sometimes when she talks to me, she turns her head to look at me, and she looks better under the street lamp. No matter what her expression is, I will feel too timid to stare into her eyes in the face of her direct gaze. Once, when we were so close together, her hair was blown up by the wind and hit my face, and an itchy sensation crept all over my face. I shook my head, and she saw it and shook her head, pulling her hair back. Looking at me and giggling, "It's itchy." ”

We will pass by a large green area with evergreen plants that fill the summer evenings with the sounds of small insects. The winter nights are quiet and you can't hear anything. The green area stretched all the way to the side of our two dorm buildings, and every time I waited for her to go to the studio together, I stood on the steps next to the green area.

Once, when I went back, I saw a couple hugging each other next to the green area, they were standing under the street lamp, and the front and rear street lights separated their shadows in both directions. I saw them in the distance, and I reminded Hai Linlin to walk with her on the other half of the road, so as not to disturb them. When we passed them across the road, we didn't speak. At that time, there were only four of us in sight on campus, and I didn't speak out of politeness and not wanting to disturb the couple, and partly out of restraint and embarrassment.

On the last night of the portrait, I was tossing and turning in bed, the creaking of the shelf bed echoing through the empty dormitory as I turned over. Although I have been thinking about her since I first saw her, I have never missed her so deeply as this night. I never had the courage to ask her out of the studio to go anywhere but in the studio, and the request to paint her portrait in the studio was so natural that it wouldn't make her think I had any other purpose. But at first I really had no other purpose than to draw her, and in the end I realized what a successful request it was, and gave me more opportunities to be alone with her.

Sometimes, I wonder if she will find out that I have an affection for her. I've always allowed myself to behave as normally as possible, and I'm careful everywhere, for fear that an inadvertent slip of the tongue or action will reveal my inner emotions that I am ashamed to show. Sometimes I feel like she doesn't know anything, and sometimes I think she knows everything and can see my deepest secrets.

I also often think about how she feels about me, and she has always shown a cheerful personality in front of me, without the slightest concealment. When we talked, she sometimes smiled and leaned back, and sometimes when she needed to be quiet, she acted like a steady thinker.

I knew she would be out of school in a few days. It fueled the most ardent desire in my heart, and I desperately wanted to see her again, to see her all the time, to hope that she would always be in front of my eyes. I lay on the bed and took out my phone, it was already past eleven o'clock, and when I talked to her, I knew that she had always had a habit of going to bed early and waking up early, and I guessed that she might have fallen asleep at that time, and it was not appropriate to call. I thought about it for a long time, and I didn't know what kind of text to send her. In the end, I only sent her a two-word message: "Good night." ”

For the next few days, she spent the last days in the English training class from morning to evening. None of us contacted anyone, I didn't see her, I went to the studio to see it, and her portrait was still on the easel, and she didn't take it. I still wander between the dormitory and the library, but more often I sit at the same table in the library and get rid of the feeling of loss that Helenlin feels because of her thoughts. The little caretaker was busy among the rows of bookshelves, greeting me as he pushed the cart past me, and I would smile back at him out of politeness.

"You've been turning this page for over 2 hours. "He said once when he was pushing a cart past me. "Your eyes don't have the same sparkle as before. ”

He must not have thought that I would be a professor or a scholar anymore, and I didn't want to be like that. But I feel that I have to solve the matter of Hai Linlin, and I remembered Qian Minwei's words to me that love is the world of the brave, and I have always believed in this statement, but I have never practiced it. Just as I had made up my mind to call her name in front of her, I had made up my mind to confess my love to her face one day before I left school. This is the result of several sleepless nights and restless days of reflection,

I felt like a gambler, making a last-ditch gamble, and if I was lucky, I would have no qualms about holding her hand, and I was sure that when I put the bet on the table, I wouldn't have any scruples about anything.

It will also be the last important thing I will do in my school career.

I texted her and told her that I would be waiting for her downstairs in her dorm room at 20:30 on Wednesday night, hoping she would be on time for her appointment. By that time, her English class was completely over. It was the first time I had asked her out in this way, and the first time I had met for reasons other than painting. I thought about the end of her English class, and that was the most appropriate time.

After a while, she texted me back: "Good night." ”