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Yes, it is dark, isn't it? Good afternoon. (_Closes door.)(To_ SYLVESTER.) Phew! You couldn't have arrived at a worse time.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Thanks.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
I don't mean to be inhospitable, but the ice was thin.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Have you done anything to "Susannah?"
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Not a stroke, but I commence to-morrow in earnest. I've a model coming this afternoon, and if you'll let me use your studio, I shall knock in enough in a week for old Schercl to see when he calls again.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Why do you want my studio--what's the matter with this?
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Well, the fact is my wife is always popping in here, and if she found me with a model posed as Susannah she'd go into hysterics. You understand me?
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Understand you. I'm a married man.
(TEMPENNY _looks at him silently, and then puts out his hand_.
SYLVESTER _grasps it_.)
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
I don't want to gush, but--I feel for you, old chap.
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_gratefully_).
I know--I know.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY (_offering pouch_).
Smoke?
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_producing pipe_).
Thanks.
(_They fill their pipes without speaking and puff sympathetically_.)
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Not but what she is a good sort--I don't want to say anything against her.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Of course not.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
But--I suppose she's too fond of me.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
It's a way wives have--they repay the superabundance of your devotion during the courts.h.i.+p.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Exactly. She's jealous.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Of whom?
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Of n.o.body--of everyone. Of my past, which was rather more decent than most fellows--of my life to-day, which is a pattern for a County Councillor.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Poor beggar.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
You're sorry for me?
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Devilishly. To be married to a jealous woman!--what a fate.
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_with a groan_).
Ah! Tempenny, there was a girl I used to know when I was a bachelor--she was a model. My wife found her likeness one day after we were married. A likeness, nothing more--I thought I had destroyed it.
Well, if you'd have heard the ructions she made; you'd have thought she'd found a harem.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Ah!
