"You took a fancy to the fellow the first time you saw him."

"I did not take a fancy. I am not an under-housemaid."

"There's not really a particle of difference between an under-housemaid
and a super-lady when it comes to a good-looking man."

"Dick, you're a great painter, but you're also a great vulgarian!"

"Well, my father was a national schoolmaster and my mother was a
butcher's daughter. I can't help my vernacular. You took a fancy to this
fellow in the Cafe Royal, and you begged me to paint him so that you
might get to know him. I obeyed you--"

"The heavens will certainly fall before you become obedient."

"--and asked him here. Then I asked you. You came. He came. I started
painting. How many sittings have I had?"

"Three."

"Then you've met him here four times?"

"Yes."

"And why have you always let him go away alone from the studio?"

"Why should I go with him? I much prefer to stay on here and have a talk
with you. You are far more interesting than Arabian is. He says very
little. Probably he knows very little. I can learn from you."

"That's all very well. I will say you're damned keen on acquiring
knowledge. But Arabian interests you in a way I certainly don't; in a
sex way."

"That'll do, Dick!"

"And directly a woman gets to that all the lumber of knowledge can go to
the devil for her! When Nature drives the coach brain interests occupy
the back seat. That is a rule with women to which I've never yet
found an exception. Every day you're longing to go away from here with
Arabian; every day he does his level best to get you to go. Yet you
don't go. Why's that? You're held back by fear. You're afraid of the
fellow, my girl, and it's not a bit of use your denying it. When I see a
thing I see it--it's there. I don't deal in hallucinations."

All this time his small eyes were fixed upon her, and the fierce little
lights in them seemed to touch her like the points of two pins.

"You talk about fear! Does it never occur to you that Arabian's a man
you picked up at the Cafe Royal, that we neither of us know anything
about him, that he may be--"

"Anyhow, he's far more presentable that I am."

"Of course he's presentable, as you call it. He's very well dressed and
very good-looking, but still--"

At that moment she thought of Craven, and in her mind quickly compared
the two men.

"But still you're afraid of him. Where is your frankness? Why don't you
acknowledge what I already know?"