"Vermouth and one tiny cigarette," Sabatini suggested,--"the best _aperetif_ in the world. Permit me, Mr. Chetwode--to our better acquaintance!" "I never need an _aperetif_," Arnold answered, raising the wine-glass to his lips, "but I will drink to your toast, with pleasure." Sabatini lit his cigarette, and, leaning slightly against the back of a chair, stood with folded arms looking at the picture over the fireplace. "Your remark about Fatime suggested reservations," he remarked. "I wonder why? I have a good many curios in the room, and some rather wonderful prints, but it was Fatime who held you while you waited. Yet you are not one of those, I should imagine," he added, blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke, "to whom the call of sex is irresistible." Arnold shook his head. "No, I don't think so," he admitted simply. "To tell you the truth, I think that it was the actual presence of the picture here, rather than its suggestions, which interested me most. Your room is so masculine," Arnold added, glancing around. "It breathes of war and sport and the collector. And then, in the middle of it all, this girl, with her barely veiled limbs and lascivious eyes. There is something a little brutal about the treatment, don't you think?" Sabatini shrugged his shoulders. "The lady is too well known," remarked Sabatini, shrugging his shoulders. "A single touch of the ideal and the greatness of that picture would be lost. Greve was too great an artist to try for it." "Nevertheless," Arnold persisted, "she disturbs the serenity of your room." Sabatini threw away his cigarette and passed his arm through his companion's. "It is as well always to be reminded that life is many-sided," he murmured. "You will not mind a _tete-a-tete_ dinner?"