'll paint you if I ever feel like
it--not a minute before."

"I was only going to say that if you ever painted me you'd try to find
something horrible in me that you could drag to the surface."

"Well, d'you mean that you have the _toupet_ to tell me there is nothing
horrible in you?"

"Now we are getting away from Arabian," she said, with cool
self-possession.

"Owing to your infernal egoism, my girl!"

"Override it, then, with your equally infernal altruism, my boy!"

Garstin smiled, and for a moment looked a little less fatigued, but in
a moment his almost morose preoccupation returned. He glanced again
towards the sketch.

"I should like to slit it up with a palette knife!" he said. "The devil
of it is that I felt I could do a really great thing with that fellow. I
struck out a fine phrase that night. D'you remember?"

"Yes. You called him a king in the underworld."

Abruptly he got up and began to walk about the studio, stopping now
here, now there, before his portraits. He paused for quite a long time
before the portraits of Cora and the judge. Then he came back to the
sketch of Arabian.

"You must help me!" he said at last.

"I!" she exclaimed, with almost sharp surprise. "How can I help you?"

He turned, and she saw the pin-points of light.

"What do you think of the fellow?" he said. "After all, you asked me to
paint him. What do you think of him?"

"I think he's magnificently handsome."

"Blast his envelope!" Garstin almost roared out. "What do you think
of his nature? What do you think of his soul? I'm not a painter of
surfaces."

Miss Van Tuyn sat for a moment looking steadily at him. She was
unusually natural and unself-conscious, like one thinking too strongly
to bother about herself. At last she said:

"Arabian is a very difficult man to understand, and I don't understand
him."

"Do you like him?"

"I couldn't exactly say that."

"Do you hate him?"

"No."

Garstin suddenly looked almost maliciously sly.

"I can tell you something that you feel about him."

"What?"

"You are afraid of him."

Miss Van Tuyn's silky fair skin reddened.

"I'm not afraid of anyone," she retorted. "If I have one virtue, I think
it's courage."

"You're certainly not a Miss Nancy as a rule. In fact, your cheek is
pretty well known in Paris. But you're afraid of Arabian."

"Am I really?" said the girl, recovering from her surprise and facing
him hardily. "And how have you found that out?"