“I should like to slit it up with a palette knife!” he said. “The devil of it is that I felt I could do a really great thing with that fellow. I struck out a fine phrase that night. D’you remember?”
“Yes. You called him a king in the underworld.”
Abruptly he got up and began to walk about the studio, stopping now here, now there, before his portraits. He paused for quite a long time before the portraits of Cora and the judge. Then he came back to the sketch of Arabian.
“I!” she exclaimed, with almost sharp surprise. “How can I help you?”
He turned, and she saw the pin-points of light.
“What do you think of the fellow?” he said. “After all, you asked me to paint him. What do you think of him?”
“Blast his envelope!” Garstin almost roared out. “What do you think of his nature? What do you think of his soul? I’m not a painter of surfaces.”
Miss Van Tuyn sat for a moment looking steadily at him. She was unusually natural and unself-conscious, like one thinking too strongly to bother about herself. At last she said:
“Arabian is a very difficult man to understand, and I don’t understand him.”
Garstin suddenly looked almost maliciously sly.
“I can tell you something that you feel about him.”
Miss Van Tuyn’s silky fair skin reddened.
“I’m not afraid of anyone,” she retorted. “If I have one virtue, I think it’s courage.”
“You’re certainly not a Miss Nancy as a rule. In fact, your cheek is pretty well known in Paris. But you’re afraid of Arabian.”
“Am I really?” said the girl, recovering from her surprise and facing him hardily. “And how have you found that out?”
“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?”