ul, even preoccupied. Almost
immediately afterwards she got up to go.

"Coming to-morrow?" he said.

"What--to see you paint?"

"Coming?"

"You really mean that I may?"

"I do. You'll help me."

She looked rather startled, and then, immediately, keenly curious.

"I don't see how."

"No reason you should! Now off with you! I've got things to do."

"Then good-bye."

As she was going away she stopped for a moment before the portrait of
the judge.

"He found out why you painted that portrait."

"Arabian?" said Garstin.

"Yes. And he said something about it that wasn't stupid."

"What was that?"

"He said it was more than a portrait of one man, that it was a portrait
of the world's hypocrisy."

"Damned good!" said Garstin with a sonorous chuckle. "And his portrait
will be more than the portrait of one man."

"Yes?" she said, looking eagerly at him.

But he would not say anything more, and she went away full of deep
curiosity, but thankful that she had decided to stay on in London.

CHAPTER II

Two days after the visit of Arabian to Dick Garstin's studio Lady
Sellingworth received a note from Francis Braybrooke, who invited her
to dine with him at the Carlton on the following evening, and to visit a
theatre afterwards. "Our young friends, Beryl Van Tuyn and Alick Craven"
would be of the party, he hoped. Lady Sellingworth had no engagement.
She seldom left home in the evening. Yet she hesitated to accept this
invitation. She had not seen Miss Van Tuyn since the evening in Soho,
nor Braybrooke since his visit to Berkeley Square to tell her about his
trip to Paris, but she had seen Craven three times, and each time alone.
Their intimacy had deepened with a rapidity which now almost startled
her as she thought of it, holding Braybrooke's unanswered note. Already
it seemed very strange to recall the time when she had not known Craven,
when she had never seen him, had never heard of him. Sixty years she had
lived without this young man in her life. She could hardly believe that.
And now, with this call to meet him in public, before very watchful
eyes, and in the company of two people who she was sure were in
different ways hostile to her intimacy with him, she felt the cold touch
of fear. And she doubted what course to take.

She wondered why Braybrooke had asked her and suspected a purpose. In
a moment she believed that she had guessed what that purpose was.
Braybrooke was meditating a stroke again