A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly, and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His persistence frightened her.
He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, “Well, I will come again,” and so went away.
She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini’s. It was not far, but she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosina came in to her presently from the professor’s studio. She wore a man’s tweed coat and a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.
“So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa Medici is away?”
“Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not finished. How is Pasquina?”
Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice. “She is very well. How pretty you are.” She rearranged the laces at the girl’s breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin. “That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot.”
“Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be afraid to go home to-night.”
The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. “He knows where you live? Have you only seen him once?”
“He—he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him.”
Rosina nodded. “Si capisce! I will take care of you. I have met so many mascalzoni in twenty years that I have grown used to them. I will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will scratch his eyes out.”