n wrong in thinking that she
was secretly excited when he met her in the hall at Claridge's. She
had fulfilled her promise to Dick Garstin, driven to fulfilment by his
taunt. No one should say with truth that she was afraid of anyone, man
or woman. She would prove to Garstin that she was not afraid of the
man he was trying to paint. So, on the day of their conversation in the
studio, she had left Glebe Place with Arabian. For the first time she
had been alone with him for more than a few minutes.

She had gone both eagerly and reluctantly; reluctantly because there
was really something in Arabian which woke in her a sort of frail
and quivering anxiety such as she had never felt before in any man's
company; eagerly because Garstin had put into words what had till then
been only a suspicion in her mind. He had told her that Arabian was in
love with her. Was that true? Even now she was not sure. That was part
of the reason why she was not quite at ease with Arabian. She was not
sure of anything about him except that he was marvellously handsome. But
Garstin was piercingly sharp. What he asserted about anyone was usually
the fact. He could hardly be mistaken. Yet how could a woman be in doubt
about such a thing? And she was still, in spite of her vanity, in doubt.

When Arabian had come into the studio that day, and had seen the sketch
of him ripped up by the palette knife, he had looked almost fierce for
a moment. He had turned towards Garstin with a sort of hauteur like one
demanding, and having the right to demand, an explanation.

"What's the row?" Garstin had said, with almost insolent defiance. "I
destroyed it because it's damned bad. I hadn't got you."

And then he had taken the canvas from the easel and had thrown it
contemptuously into a corner of the studio.

Arabian had said nothing, but there had been a cloud on his face, and
Miss Van Tuyn had known that he was angry, as a man is angry when he
sees a bit of his property destroyed by another. And she had remembered
her words to Arabian, that the least sketch by Garstin was worth a great
deal of money.

Surely Arabian was a greedy man.

No work had been done in the studio that morning. They had sat and
talked for a while. Garstin had said most. He had been more agreeable
than usual, and had explained to Arabian, rather as one explains to a
child, that a worker in an art is sometimes baffled for a time, a writer
by his theme, a musician by his floating and p