“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?” “To be sure I do.” “Isn’t that enough to go upon?” “For the painting? No, it isn’t. Besides, you said you weren’t sure I was right in my diagnosis of the chap’s character and physical part.” “I wasn’t sure, and I’m not sure now.” “Tell me God’s own truth, Beryl. Come on!” He came up to her, put one hand on her left shoulder, and looked down into her eyes. “Aren’t you a bit afraid of the fellow?” She met his eyes steadily. “There’s something--” She paused. “Go ahead, I tell you!” “I couldn’t describe it. It’s more like an atmosphere than anything else. It seems to hang about him. I’ve never felt anything quite like it when I’ve been with anyone else.” “An atmosphere! Now we’re getting at it.” He took his heavy hand away from her shoulder. “A woman feels that sort of thing more sensitively than a man does. Sex! Go on! What about it?” “But I scarcely know what I mean--really, Dick. No! But it’s--it’s an unsafe atmosphere.” “Ah!” “One doesn’t know where one is in it. At least, I don’t. Once in London I was lost for a little while in Regents Park in a fog. It’s--it’s something like that. I couldn’t see the way, and I heard steps and voices that sounded strange and--I don’t know.” “Find out!” “That’s all very well. You are terribly selfish, Dick. You don’t care what happens so long as you can paint as you wish to paint. You’d sacrifice me, anyone--” The girl seemed strangely uneasy. Her usual coolness had left her. The hot blood had come back to her cheeks and glowed there in uneven patches of red. Garstin gazed at her with profound and cruel interest. “Sacrifice!” he said. “Who talked of sacrificing you? Who wishes to sacrifice you? I only want--” “One doesn’t know--with a man like that one doesn’t know where it would lead to.” “Then you think he’s a thundering blackguard? And yet you defended him just now, said perhaps I couldn’t paint him just because I’d made up my mind he was a brute. You’re a mass of contradictions.” “I don’t say he’s bad. He may not be bad.” “Fact is, as I said, you’re in a mortal funk of him.”