and of the quarter of an hour so often apparently
wasted by the great physician as he talks about topics unconnected
with symptoms to his anxious visitor. She was certain that Garstin was
determined to paint Arabian whether the latter was willing to be painted
or not, and she was equally certain that already Garstin had begun to
work on his sitter, not with brushes but with the mind. For his
own benefit, and incidentally for hers, Garstin was carelessly, but
cleverly, trying to find out things about Arabian, not things about his
life, but things about his education, and his mind and his temperament.
He did not ask him vulgar questions. He just talked, and watched, and
occasionally listened in the midst of the cigar smoke, and often with
the whisky at his lips.

She had refused to take any whisky, but smoked cigarette after cigarette
quickly, nervously almost. She was enjoying herself immensely, but she
felt unusually excited, mentally restless, almost mentally agitated. Her
usual coolness of mind had been changed into a sort of glow by Garstin
and the living bronze. She always liked being alone with men, hearing
men talk among themselves or talking with them free from the presence
of women. But to-day she was exceptionally stimulated for she was
exceptionally curious. There was something in Arabian which vaguely
troubled her, and which also enticed her almost against her will. And
now she was following along a track, pioneered by a clever and cunning
leader.

Garstin talked about London, which Arabian apparently knew fairly well,
though he said he had never lived long in London; then about Paris,
which Arabian also knew and spoke of like a man who visited it now
and then for purposes of pleasure. Then Garstin spoke of the art he
followed, of the old Italian painters and of the Galleries of Italy.
Arabian became very quiet. His attitude and bearing were those of one
almost respectfully listening to an expert holding forth on a subject
he had made his own. Now and then he said something non-committal. There
was no evidence that he had any knowledge of Italian pictures, that he
could distinguish between a Giovanni Bellini and a Raphael, tell a Luini
from a Titian.

Miss Van Tuyn wondered again whether he had ever heard of Leonardo.

Garstin mentioned some Paris painters of the past, but of more recent
times than those of the grand old Italians, spoke of Courbet, of Manet,
of Renoir, Guilaumin, Sisley, the Barbizon sch