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"Now I shall take you to M'sieur Michelin," Rosina said when they had left Varini's. "He is looking for a type, and perhaps you will please him. He is strano, but good always, and he pays well." "It is not tiring you?" "Ma che! I must see that you begin well and with the right people. Some painters are canaglia. Ah, I know that," the girl said with a little sigh and a shrug of her shoulders.
Olive noticed the lad who had been called in to Varini's studio to see her; the boy who sat next him had a round, impudent face, and when presently she yawned he smiled at her. "I will ask questions to keep you awake, but you must answer truly. Have you taken a fancy to anyone here?" "I don't dislike you or Mario." They rose simultaneously and bowed. "We are honoured. But why?
"Forgive me! It is past noon. Run away, child, and come back at two." The day seemed very long in spite of Camille's easy kindness, and the girl shrank from the subsequent sitting at Varini's. "Why do you pose for those wretched boys?" grumbled the Prix de Rome man. "After this week you must come to me only. I must paint a Rosamund."
But you are well educated one sees that it is not fit work for such as you." "Never mind that," Olive said eagerly. "How does one begin being a model? I will try that. Will you help me?" Rosina beamed at her. "Sicuro! We will go to Varini's school in the Corso if you like. The woman in the newspaper kiosk in the Piazza di Spagna knows me, and I can leave Pasquina with her. An'iamo!"
You are not Roman; have you sat to any other man here?" "No. I am going to Varini's in the evenings next week." "Ah! Well, don't let anyone else get hold of you. Gontrand will be trying to snap you up. He is so tired of the cioccare. What shall I call you?" "Nothing. I have no name." "I shall give you one. You shall be called child. Come at nine and you will find the door open."
Rosina had never been sly in her life; she was ever as simply without shame as Eve before the Fall, and lawless because she knew no law. The darkness of Northern cities is tainted and cold and cannot bring forth such kindly things as the rosine little roses that spring up in the warm, sweet Roman dust. "Here is Varini's."
She had not seen the Prince for two days and she was beginning to hope that he had gone away, but she was not yet able to feel free of him. Rosina had come home with her every night from Varini's. Once he had followed them, and twice he had come up the stairs and knocked at the door.
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.
He would die in his bed, full of years and honour, a great artist, a master, the president of many societies, but she Sometimes, as she stood facing the semi-circle of men at Varini's, and listened to the busy scratching of charcoal on paper, to Bembi's heavy breathing, and to the ticking of the clock, she wondered if she had done wrong in taking this way of bread earning.
Besides, oreads are nearly related to Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort." He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa Medici. "I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three mornings a week.
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