She could not foresee the end of this adventure brought about by her own audacious wilfulness. Some day she supposed Dick Garstin would be satisfied with his work. A successful portrait of Arabian would stand on the easel in Glebe Place. Garstin was not at all satisfied yet. She knew that. He had put aside two more beginnings angrily, had started again, had paused, taken up other work, taken a rest, sent for Arabian once more. But this strange impotence of Garstin to satisfy himself would surely not last for ever. Either he would succeed, or he would abandon the attempt to succeed, or--a third possibility presented itself to Miss Van Tuyn’s mind--his model would get tired of the conflict and refuse to “sit” any more. And then--the depths? Till now Arabian’s patience had been remarkable. Evidently Garstin’s obstinacy was matched by an obstinacy in him. Although he had once perhaps been secretly reluctant to sit, had been tempted to become Garstin’s model by the promise of the finished picture, he now seemed determined to do his part, endured Garstin’s irritability, dissatisfaction, abandoned and renewed attempts to “make a first-rate job of him” with remarkable good temper. He was evidently resolved not to give up this enterprise without his reward. There was fixed purpose in his patience. “By God he’s a stayer!” Garstin had said of him in a puffing breath one day when the palette knife had been angrily used once more. “Either he’s waiting for the money value of a portrait by me like a cat for a mouse, or he’s afraid of the finish.” “Why?” Miss Van Tuyn had asked. “Well, you’re in the thing! Perhaps he’s afraid that when he says good-bye to my studio he says good-bye to you too. Or perhaps the two reasons govern him--love of money, love of woman. Anyhow he’s a sticker!” “He only wants the picture,” she had said. But that remark had been made for the benefit of Garstin. By this time she knew that Arabian had a further purpose, and that it was connected with herself. She was sure that he was intent on her. And she wondered very much what he would do when at last the picture was finished. Surely then something definite must happen. She both longed for and dreaded that moment. She knew Garstin, and she knew that once he had achieved what he was trying--“sweating blood,” he called it--to achieve his interest in Arabian would almost certainly cease. Arabian would then be nothing but used material of no more value in Garstin’s life. The picture would be exhibited, and then handed over to Arabian, and Garstin would be off on some other track.