hopelessly dull and conventional, who did not count, and the
definitely outrageous, who were often interesting and worthy of being
studied and sometimes painted. It must be obvious to anyone that
the living bronze could not be numbered among the merely dull and
conventional. Naturally enough, then, Garstin supposed him to be a
successful blackmailer. Miss Van Tuyn was not going to allow herself
to be influenced by the putrescence of Garstin's mind. She had her own
views on everything and usually held to them. She had quite decided
that she would get to know the living bronze through Garstin, who
always managed to know anyone he was interested in. Being totally
unconventional and not, as he said, caring a damn about the proprieties,
if he wished to speak to someone he spoke to him, if he wished to paint
him he told him to come along to the studio. There was a simplicity
about Garstin's methods which was excused in some degree by his fame.
But if he had not been famous he would have acted in just the same way.
No shyness hindered him; no doubts about himself ever assailed him.
He just did what he wanted to do without _arriere pensee_. There was
certainly strength in Garstin, although it was not moral strength.

The morning after the dinner in Soho Miss Van Tuyn telegraphed to Fanny
Cronin to come over at once, with Bourget's latest works, and engaged
an apartment at Claridge's. Although she sometime dined in the shadow
of Vesuvius, she preferred to issue forth from some lair which was
unmistakably smart and comfortable. Claridge's was both, and everybody
came there. Miss Cronin wired obedience and would be on the way
immediately. Meanwhile Miss Van Tuyn received Craven's note in answer to
hers.

She grasped all its meaning, surface and subterranean, immediately. It
meant a very polite, very carefully masked, withdrawal from the sphere
of her influence. The passage about Soho was perfectly clear to her
mind, although to many it might have seemed to convey an agreeably
worded acceptance of her suggestion, only laying its translation into
action in a rather problematical future, the sort of future which would
become present when "neither of us has an engagement."

Craven had evidently been "got at" by Adela Sellingworth.

On the morning after Miss Van Tuyn's telegram to Paris Fanny Cronin
arrived, with Bourget's latest book in her hand, and later they settled
in at Claridge's. Miss Cronin went to bed, and Miss Van Tuyn,