They had come to the easel on which was the half-finished portrait of Cora, staring across her empty glass. “She goes to the Cafe Royal.” He looked again at Miss Van Tuyn. “Do you ever go there?” he asked gravely. “No, never,” she said with calm simplicity, returning his gaze. “Well she--that woman--sits there alone just like that. She has a purpose. She is waiting for someone to come in who will come some night. And she knows that, and will wait, like a dog before a hole which contains something he intends to kill. This Mr. Dick Garstin is very clever. He is more than a painter; he is an understander.” “Ah!” she said, intimately pleased by this remark. “You do appreciate him! Garstin is great because he paints not merely for the eye that looks for a sort of painted photograph, but for the eye that demands a summing up of character.” Arabian looked sideways at her. “What is that--of character, mademoiselle?” “A summing up! That is a presentation of the sum total of the character.” “Oh, yes.” He looked again at Cora. “One knows what she is by that,” he said. Then, standing still, he looked rapidly all round the studio, glancing first at one portrait then at another, with eyes which despite their lustrous softness, seemed to make a sort of prey of whatever they lighted on. “But they are all women and all of a certain world!” he said, almost suspiciously. “Why is that?” “Garstin is passing through a phase just now. He paints from the Cafe Royal.” “Oh!” He paused, and his brown face took on a look of rather hard meditation. “Does he never paint what they call decent people?” he inquired. “One may occasionally spend an hour at the Cafe Royal--especially if one is not English--without belonging to the _bas-fonds_. I do not know whether Mr. Dick Garstin understands that.” “Of course he does,” she said, instantly grasping the meaning of his hesitation. “But there is one portrait--of a man--which I don’t think you have looked at.” “Where?” “On that big easel with its back to us. If you want a decent person”--she spoke with a slightly ironical intonation--“go and see what Garstin can do with decency.” “I will.” And he walked over to the side of the room opposite to the grand piano, and went to stand in front of the easel she had indicated. She stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. Finally he said: “I think Mr. Dick Garstin is a humorist. Do not you?” “But--why?” “To put this gentleman in the midst of all the law breakers.”