conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Girl in Hyacinth Blue about Vermeer, York, Post with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: "The stories depict ordinary details from distinct eras with the light touch and clarity of a real Vermeer. the author's story is a work of art".<P>-- New York Post
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Girl in Hyacinth Blue
  Cornelius Engelbrecht invented himself. Let me emphasize, straight away, that he isn't what I would call a friend, but I know him enough to say that he did purposely design himself: single, modest dresser in receding colors, mathematics teacher, sponsor of the chess club, mild mannered acquaintance to all rather than a friend to any, a person anxious to become invisible. However, that exterior blandness masked a burning center, and for some reason that became clear to me only later, Cornelius Engelbrecht revealed to me the secret obsession that lay beneath his orderly, controlled design.
  He spoke to his beer rather than to any of us. "'An eye like a blue pearl,' was what my father said. And then he died. During a winter's first snowfall, just like this."
  Cornelius had a face I'd always associated with Piero della Francesca's portrait of the Duke of Urbino. It was the shape of his nose, narrow but extremely high-bridged, providing a bench for glasses he did not wear. He seemed a man distracted by a mystery or preoccupied by an intellectual or moral dilemma so consuming that it made him feel superior, above those of us whose concerns were tires for the car or a child's flu. Whenever our talk moved toward the mundane, he became distant, as though he were mulling over something far more weighty, which made his cool smiles patronizing.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It wasn't only Jantje who needed it. The Oriental tapestry on the table, the map on the wall, the engraved brass latch on the window—since Saskia couldn't have these things in reality, then she wanted them all the more in the painting. For the moments when she was filled with the joy of Jantje blowing bubbles out his tiny mouth, or when Piet made her laugh at his antics, or when Marta ate her bread with her little finger extended like a lady at tea, the grip of wanting left her and she was at peace. But that wasn't constant.
  She slept that night not touching him in the narrow bed. In the morning, she opened the shutters to find ash-gray fog obscuring everything so that she could barely make out their own barn. "Thank you, Heavenly Father," she whispered. Stijn certainly wouldn't send her out on pathless waters in a fog. She'd be sure to get lost. The next marketday, she feigned sickness, but thought he suspected. The next, Piet actually was. In this way the issue of the painting retreated. Often she studied his face, the lines forming around his eyes thin as hairs, to see if he still thought of it.
  She knew he meant the eating potatoes, for no farmer, not even a starving farmer, would touch his store of seed potatoes, the new crop Stijn was pioneering in the northland.
  He didn't ask about the pickled meat. They both knew by her smaller portions that they didn't have much.
  She turned from him. He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "I'm not asking you to give up the child, Saskia."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She stood on tiptoe and didn't breathe when her painting was announced. Her hand in her pocket closed tight around the twenty-four guilders, some of it borrowed from two neighbor women, some of it taken secretly from the box where Nicolaes kept money for leather supplies. It was all she could find, and she didn't dare ask for more. He would have thought it foolish.
  The rest was a blur of sound. It finally went to a man who kept conferring with his wife, which she took as a good sign that it was going to a nice family. Forty-seven guilders. Most of the paintings sold for much more, but forty-seven was fine, she thought. In fact, it filled her momentarily with what she'd been taught was the sin of pride. Then she thought of Hendrick and a pain lashed through her.
  She followed the couple out into the drizzle of Herengracht, wanting to make herself known to them, just to have a few words, but then dropped back. She had such bad teeth now, and they were people of means. The woman wore stockings. What would she say to them? She didn't want them to think she wanted anything.
  She walked away slowly along a wet stone wall that shone iridescent, and the wetness of the street reflected back the blue of her best dress. Water spots appeared fast, turning the cerulean to deep ultramarine, Father's favorite blue. Light rain pricked the charcoal green canal water into delicate, dark lace, and she wondered if it had ever been painted just that way, or if the life of something as inconsequential as a water drop could be arrested and given to the world in a painting, or if the world would care.
  She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Forty-seven, owed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She stood on tiptoe and didn't breathe when her painting was announced. Her hand in her pocket closed tight around the twenty-four guilders, some of it borrowed from two neighbor women, some of it taken secretly from the box where Nicolaes kept money for leather supplies. It was all she could find, and she didn't dare ask for more. He would have thought it foolish. 
  The rest was a blur of sound. It finally went to a man who kept conferring with his wife, which she took as a good sign that it was going to a nice family. Forty-seven guilders. Most of the paintings sold for much more, but forty-seven was fine, she thought. In fact, it filled her momentarily with what she'd been taught was the sin of pride. Then she thought of Hendrick and a pain lashed through her. Forty-seven guilders minus the auctioneer's fee didn't come close to what her family had owed him. 
  She followed the couple out into the drizzle of Herengracht, wanting to make herself known to them, just to have a few words, but then dropped back. She had such bad teeth now, and they were people of means. The woman wore stockings. What would she say to them? She didn't want them to think she wanted anything. 
  She walked away slowly along a wet stone wall that shone iridescent, and the wetness of the street reflected back the blue of her best dress. Water spots appeared fast, turning the cerulean to deep ultramarine, Father's favorite blue. Light rain pricked the charcoal green canal water into delicate, dark lace, and she wondered if it had ever been painted just that way, or if the life of something as inconsequential as a water drop could be arrested and given to the world in a painting, or if the world would care. 
  She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.