"I think," Pynsent admitted cautiously, "that she expected me to make love to her, but I didn't. I took a dislike to the woman. And it came out in the picture. Unpleasant things were said about it at the time, but she liked it. She told me I had succeeded. And—Great Scott!—so I had."
"She has captivated and is captivated by Mark Samphire. He is going to marry her."
"What?"
"It is partly my fault, but I was so sure of—him." He told the story at length. "And now what are we to do?"
"Mark—Mark!" Pynsent kept repeating stupidly. "It is incredible. Mark Samphire—and Sybil Perowne!"
"She has never denied herself anything."
"She'll suck every ounce of good blood from his body. It would be kindness to knock him on the head."
"It would be pleasure to knock her on the head," said Tommy gloomily.
"We can do nothing," said Pynsent, at length, as he lit one of his Caporal cigarettes, which he smoked between the courses. "There was Maiden. When I studied at the Beaux Arts, Maiden was the coming man. By Jove! he had come. I remember his big picture in the Salon of '79. Crowds stood in front of it, jabbering like monkeys. It was great, great. And France bought it. It hangs in the Luxembourg to-day. Well, Maiden had a model, a queer little devil of a girl with huge black eyes whom he stuck into all his pictures. He bought her from her mother out of a slum, the Rue du Haut-Pavé, close to the cabaret du Soleil d'Or, and she followed him about like a spaniel, all over Normandy and Brittany. We wondered what would happen when the child became a woman. Gad! we might have guessed for a year and a day and never hit the truth. Maiden married her! He, the wit, the scholar, the gentleman, married that guttersnipe. And he hasn't painted a picture for fifteen years! I tell you, Tommy, that it's impossible to predict what any man will do when he comes in contact with the wrong woman."
"Or with the right one," said Greatorex, frowning.