“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.”
“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 than 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?”
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?”