(Exit SCHERCL.)

REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.

(Calling after him from open door.) Mind the bottom step, it’s awkward.  Got it?

HENRICH SCHERCL (off).

It is so dark your staircase.

REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.

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 courtship.

CHARLES SYLVESTER.

Exactly.  She’s jealous.

REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.

Of whom?

CHARLES SYLVESTER.

Of nobody—­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.