ge them."

"And what way is that?"

"If they are portraits, I mean."

"Yes?"

"I judge them by their humanity. One does not want to be made worse than
one is in a picture."

"I'm afraid you won't like Dick Garstin's work," she said decisively.

She was rather disappointed. Had this audaciously handsome man a cult
for the pretty-pretty?

"Let us see!" he replied, smiling.

He looked round the big studio. As he did so she noticed that he had an
extraordinarily quick and all-seeing glance, and realized that in some
way, in some direction, he must be clever, even exceptionally clever.
There were some eight to ten portraits in the studio, a few finished,
others half finished or only just begun. Arabian went first to stand
before the finished portrait of a girl of about eighteen, whose face
was already plainly marked--blurred, not sharpened--by vice. Her youth
seemed obscured by a faint fog of vice--as if she had projected it, and
was slightly withdrawn behind it. Arabian looked at her in silence. Miss
Van Tuyn watched him, standing back, not quite level with him. And she
saw on his face an expression that suggested to her a man contemplating
something he was very much at home with.

"That is a bad girl!" was his only comment, as he moved on to the next
picture.

This was also the portrait of a woman, but of a woman well on in life,
an elderly and battered siren of the streets, wrecked by men and by
drink. Only the head and bust were shown, a withered head crowning a
bust which had sunken in. There was an old pink hat set awry on the
head. From beneath it escaped coarse wisps of almost orange-coloured
hair. The dull, small eyes were deep-set under brows which looked
feverish. A livid spot of red glowed almost like a torch-end on each
high cheek-bone. The mouth had fallen open.

Arabian examined this tragedy, which was one of Garstin's finest bits
of work in Miss Van Tuyn's estimation, with careful and close attention,
but without showing the faintest symptom of either pity or disgust.

"In my opinion that is well painted," was his comment. "They do get to
be like that. And then they starve. And that is because they have no
brains."

"Garstin swears that woman must once have been very beautiful," said
Miss Van Tuyn.

"Oh--quite possible," said Arabian.

"Well, I can't conceive it."

He turned and gave her a long, steady look, full of softness and ardour.

"It would be very sad if you could," he said. "Ex