e with
her so far? Charming, easy, bold--yes; but also reserved, absolutely
non-committal. She was not at all sure whether she was going to be of
much use to Dick Garstin, except perhaps in her own person. Instead of
delivering to him the man he wanted to come at perhaps she would end by
delivering a woman worth painting--herself.

For there was something in Arabian that was certainly dangerous to
her, something in him that excited her, that lifted her into an
unusual vitality. She did not quite know what it was. But she felt it
definitely. When she was with him alone she seemed to be in an adventure
through which a current of definite danger was flowing. No other man had
ever brought a sensation like that into her life, although she had met
many types of men in Paris, had known well talented men of acknowledged
bad character, reckless of the _convenances_, men who snapped their
fingers at all the prejudices of the orthodox, and who made no
distinction between virtues and vices, following only their own
inclinations.

Such a man was Dick Garstin. Yet Miss Van Tuyn had never with him had
the sensation of being near to something dangerous which she had with
Arabian. Yet Arabian was scrupulously polite, was quiet, almost gentle
in manner, and had a great deal of charm.

She remembered his following her in the street at night. What would he
be like with women of that sort? Would his gentleness be in evidence
with them, or would a totally different individual rise to the surface
of him, a beast of prey perhaps with the jungle in its eyes?

Something in her shrank from Arabian as she had never yet shrunk from
a human being. But something else was fascinated by him. She had the
American woman's outlook on men. She expected men to hold their own in
the world with other men, to be self-possessed, cool-headed, and bold in
their careers, but to be subservient in their relations with women. To
be ruled by a husband would have seemed to her to be quite unnatural, to
rule him quite natural. She felt sure that no woman would be likely to
rule Arabian. She felt sure that his outlook on women was absolutely
unlike that of the American man. When she looked at him she thought of
the rape of the Sabines. Surely he was a primitive under his mask
of almost careful smartness and conventionality. There was something
primitive in her, too, and she became aware of that now. Hitherto she
had been inclined to believe that she was essentially c