“Have you gone mad?” he asked.
“No one was ever saner,” Fensden replied. “Look here, Godfrey, can’t you see the position for yourself? Here is this beautiful Italian girl, whom you engaged through my agency. You take her from beggary, and put her in a position of comparative luxury. She has sat to you day after day, smiled at your compliments, and—well, to put it bluntly, has had every opportunity and encouragement given her to fall head over ears in love with you. Is it quite fair, do you think, to let it go on?”
Godfrey was completely taken aback.
“Great Scott! You don’t mean to say you think I’m such a beast as to encourage her?” he cried. “You know as well as I do that I have behaved toward her only as I have done to all the other models before her. Surely you would wish me to be civil to the girl, and try to make her work as pleasant as possible for her? If you think I’ve been a blackguard, say so outright!”
“My dear Godfrey, nothing could be further from my thoughts,” answered Fensden in his usual quiet voice, that one of his friends once compared to the purring of a cat. “I should be a poor friend, however, if I were to allow you to go on as you are going without an expostulation. Can not you look at it in the same light as I do? Are you so blind that you can not see that this girl is falling every day more deeply in love with you? The love-light gleams in her eyes whenever she looks at you; she sees an implied caress even in the gentle pats you give her drapery, when you arrange it on the stage there; a tender solicitude for her welfare when you tell her to hurry home before it rains. What is the end of it all to be? I suppose you do not intend making her your wife?”
“My wife?” said Godfrey, blankly, as if the idea were too preposterous to have ever occurred to him. “Surely you must be jesting to talk like this?”
“I am not jesting with you, if you are not jesting with her,” the other replied. “You must see for yourself that the girl worships the very ground you walk upon. However, there is still time for matters to be put right. She has so far only looked at the affair from her own standpoint; what is more, I do not want her to lose her employment with you, since it means so much to her. What I do want is, that you should take hold of yourself in time and prevent her from being made unhappy while you have the opportunity.”
“You may be quite sure that I will do so,” Henderson replied, more stiffly than he had yet spoken. “I am more sorry than I can say that this should have occurred. Teresina is a good girl, and I would no more think of causing her pain than I would of striking my own sister. And now I’m off to bed. Good-night.”
True to his promise, his behaviour next day, so far as Teresina was concerned, was so different that she regarded him with surprise, quite unable to understand the reason of the change. She thought she must have offended him in some way, and endeavoured by all the means in her power to win herself back into his good graces. But the more she tried to conciliate him, the further he withdrew into his shell. Victor Fensden, smoking his inevitable cigarette, waited to see what the result would be. There was a certain amount of pathos in the situation, and a close observer might have noticed that the strain was telling upon both of the actors in it, the girl in particular. For the next fortnight or so, the moral temperature of the studio was not as equable as of old. Godfrey, who was of too honest a nature to make a good conspirator, chafed at the part he was being called upon to play, while Teresina, who only knew that she loved, and that her love was not returned, was divided between her affections for the man and a feeling of wounded dignity for herself.