Miss Van Tuyn looked down and sat for a moment quite still without
speaking. Then she began to take off her gloves. Finally, she lifted
her hands to her head, took off her hat, and laid it on the divan beside
her.

"It isn't that I am afraid of Arabian," she then said, at last looking
up. "But the fact is I am like you. I don't understand him. I can't
place him. I don't even know what his nationality is. He knows nobody I
do. I feel certain of that. Yet he must belong somewhere, have some set
of friends, some circle of acquaintances, I suppose. He isn't at all
vulgar. One couldn't call him genteel, which is worse, I think. It's all
very odd. I'm not conventional. In Paris I'm considered even terribly
unconventional. I've met all sorts of men, but I've never met a man like
Arabian. But the other day--don't you remember?--you summed him up. You
said he had no education, no knowledge, no love of art or literature,
that he was clever, sensual, idle, acquisitive, made of iron, with
nerves of steel. Don't you remember?"

"To be sure I do."

"Isn't that enough to go upon?"

"For the painting? No, it isn't. Besides, you said you weren't sure I
was right in my diagnosis of the chap's character and physical part."

"I wasn't sure, and I'm not sure now."

"Tell me God's own truth, Beryl. Come on!"

He came up to her, put one hand on her left shoulder, and looked down
into her eyes.

"Aren't you a bit afraid of the fellow?"

She met his eyes steadily.

"There's something--" She paused.

"Go ahead, I tell you!"

"I couldn't describe it. It's more like an atmosphere than anything
else. It seems to hang about him. I've never felt anything quite like it
when I've been with anyone else."

"An atmosphere! Now we're getting at it."

He took his heavy hand away from her shoulder.

"A woman feels that sort of thing more sensitively than a man does. Sex!
Go on! What about it?"

"But I scarcely know what I mean--really, Dick. No! But it's--it's an
unsafe atmosphere."

"Ah!"

"One doesn't know where one is in it. At least, I don't. Once in London
I was lost for a little while in Regents Park in a fog. It's--it's
something like that. I couldn't see the way, and I heard steps and
voices that sounded strange and--I don't know."

"Find out!"

"That's all very well. You are terribly selfish, Dick. You don't care
what happens so long as you can paint as you wish to paint. You'd
sacrifice me, anyone--"

The girl seemed