cuse me, but are you
American?"

"Yes."

"Well, Americans never get like that. They are too practical."

"And not romantic--do you mean?" she said, not without irony.

"They can be romantic, but they save themselves from disaster with their
practical sense. I hope I put it right."

She smiled at him.

"You speak very good English. What do you think of this?"

"But I have seen her!" he said.

They had come to the easel on which was the half-finished portrait of
Cora, staring across her empty glass.

"She goes to the Cafe Royal."

He looked again at Miss Van Tuyn.

"Do you ever go there?" he asked gravely.

"No, never," she said with calm simplicity, returning his gaze.

"Well she--that woman--sits there alone just like that. She has a
purpose. She is waiting for someone to come in who will come some
night. And she knows that, and will wait, like a dog before a hole which
contains something he intends to kill. This Mr. Dick Garstin is very
clever. He is more than a painter; he is an understander."

"Ah!" she said, intimately pleased by this remark. "You do appreciate
him! Garstin is great because he paints not merely for the eye that
looks for a sort of painted photograph, but for the eye that demands a
summing up of character."

Arabian looked sideways at her.

"What is that--of character, mademoiselle?"

"A summing up! That is a presentation of the sum total of the
character."

"Oh, yes."

He looked again at Cora.

"One knows what she is by that," he said.

Then, standing still, he looked rapidly all round the studio, glancing
first at one portrait then at another, with eyes which despite their
lustrous softness, seemed to make a sort of prey of whatever they
lighted on.

"But they are all women and all of a certain world!" he said, almost
suspiciously. "Why is that?"

"Garstin is passing through a phase just now. He paints from the Cafe
Royal."

"Oh!"

He paused, and his brown face took on a look of rather hard meditation.

"Does he never paint what they call decent people?" he inquired. "One
may occasionally spend an hour at the Cafe Royal--especially if one is
not English--without belonging to the _bas-fonds_. I do not know whether
Mr. Dick Garstin understands that."

"Of course he does," she said, instantly grasping the meaning of his
hesitation. "But there is one portrait--of a man--which I don't think
you have looked at."

"Where?"

"On that big easel with its back to us.