artist-millais:Trust Me, 1862, John Everett MillaisMedium: oilHot take: She’s a political spy deep,
artist-millais:Trust Me, 1862, John Everett MillaisMedium: oilHot take: She’s a political spy deep, deep undercover who’s now torn between her original mission and the life she’s built with her fake identity. She’s been denied by her country, she has no lines of communication anymore, and she’s holding on to very, very important information with no way to send it back. She’s seen terrible things and found herself unable to help directly. And if she could only report the key information to someone, anyone on the other side, countless lives could be saved.And then she meets an old friend of hers, a captain in the navy. He nearly blows her cover, but she’s changed so much that he doesn’t say anything. He was friends with her in school, and he’d glimpsed her in society a few times and once, years later, at a secret transport of intelligence officers. Secretly, she followed his career in military reports.And then he discovers she isn’t a traitor, just undercover.He asks her to trust him with the key information. He’s willing to risk his life. If he passes the information, she can finally take action instead of staying passive. But the information needs to reach the right hands. It’s a dangerous job. He’s the first friend she’s seen in years, someone who knows her real name and the people she left behind, someone who knows she isn’t a traitor. And she’s afraid of trusting him. That’s what this ordeal has done. She’s been so isolated, she’s reduced to suspecting someone she once cherished in school-day memories.…Or this is a husband-and-wife scene where she’s cheating on him but using the old “if you really trusted me you wouldn’t ask me to hand over the suspiciously perfumed letter you just found in my bag” shtick like in Courteline’s Boubouroche story.But I prefer the spy version. -- source link
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