“Look!” he cried, his rugged chest heaving; “I can’t kneel to you, and I’m your slave. I walk open-eyed, hating and adoring you, into the toils you spread for our feet. Feet!” he groaned, looking down, with a despairing gesture. “Perhaps--who knows?--having them, I might have escaped.” “How did you lose them, poor Gogo?” I said. “Hating and adoring,” he groaned, unheeding my question, “hating and adoring. Look, little serpent: I could crush your slender throat for what you do, and hold on, and sob my soul away to see you die. Why have you come between us? United, we were strong, he and I. I drove his genius on, and loved the poor ape for its spark of divinity, and propped the weak spirit while it wrought. You knock the prop away, you knock the prop away, and we both fall; and where is _my_ compensation for the injury?” He clasped his great hands to me: “Give me back my genius,” he cried in pain, “and let us go.” I rose to my feet, half moved and half resentful. “It is not I who take him or want him. I will not come here again.” As I turned, he barred my way. “No,” he said, near sobbing, “I lied. Do what you will with us: make us angels or swine--I am content, so long as I may serve you.” As he spoke, the door opened, and de Crespigny entered. He greeted me with a rather shifty look, I thought, and his manner seemed too distraught to affect any particular notice of his servant’s obvious emotion. “O, well, _ma bella_ Unanina,” said he; “but a little sitting for this afternoon, please.” I flushed, and was about to refuse to remain at all, when an imploring scowl from Gogo softened me. With plenty of hauteur, I stalked into a little curtained-off alcove which was consecrated to me for tiring-room, and there dressed for model. When I emerged again, my feet and arms were bare, my hair loose in a golden fillet, and, for the rest, I wore a kind of seraph smock, in which _les convenances_ had been constrained to clothe me for the peerless Una. For as Una I was being painted. Looking one day through de Crespigny’s portfolios, I had come upon some “impressions,” royal, strenuous, of lions in the Tower menagerie, and was admiring the lithe, strong darlings, when his voice breathed behind me, with that little eternal foolish giggle. “Have you decided, naughty?” “Yes,” I whispered. “I will be the fairy lady whom the lion came to devour, and remained to serve and protect, because she was so pure and innocent.” He did not know who I meant; so I found him the book and place. “Ah, to be sure!” said he, reading eagerly. “She laid her stole aside, did she? Yes, it is an inspiration. It will suit me, if it does you.”