Part 54 (1/2)
”You have painted so many brutes, that you seek for the brute in everyone who sits to you. If you were to paint me you'd--”
”Now, now! There you are at it again! I'll paint you if I ever feel like it--not a minute before.”
”I was only going to say that if you ever painted me you'd try to find something horrible in me that you could drag to the surface.”
”Well, d'you mean that you have the _toupet_ to tell me there is nothing horrible in you?”
”Now we are getting away from Arabian,” she said, with cool self-possession.
”Owing to your infernal egoism, my girl!”
”Override it, then, with your equally infernal altruism, my boy!”
Garstin smiled, and for a moment looked a little less fatigued, but in a moment his almost morose preoccupation returned. He glanced again towards the sketch.
”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.
”You must help me!” he said at last.
”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?”
”I think he's magnificently handsome.”
”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.”
”Do you like him?”
”I couldn't exactly say that.”
”Do you hate him?”
”No.”
Garstin suddenly looked almost maliciously sly.
”I can tell you something that you feel about him.”
”What?”