Part 85 (2/2)
His eyes travelled round the big studio slowly, travelled from canvas to canvas, from the battered old siren of the streets to the girl who was dreaming of sins not yet committed; from Cora waiting for her prey to the judge who had condemned his.
”Haven't I? And don't you know it?”
”You are wrong this time,” she said with mutinous determination, but still with the tears in her eyes. ”You couldn't sum up Arabian. You tried and tried again. And now at last you have forced yourself to paint him. You have got angry. That's it. You have got furious with yourself and with him, because of your own impotence, and you have painted him in a pa.s.sion.”
”Oh, no!”
He shook his head.
”I never felt colder, more completely master of myself and my pa.s.sions, than when I painted that portrait.”
”But you asked me to find out his secret. You pushed me into his company that I might find it out and help you.”
”I did!”
”Well!” she said, almost triumphantly, ”I have never found it out.”
”Oh, yes, you have.”
”No. He is the most reserved, uncommunicative man I have ever known.”
”Subconsciously you have found it out, and you have conveyed it to me.
And that is the result. I suspected what the man was the first time I laid eyes on him. When I got him here I seemed to get off the track of him. For he's very deceptive--somehow. Yes, he's d.a.m.ned deceptive. But then you put me wise. Your growing terror of him put me wise.”
He looked hard into her eyes.
”Beryl, my girl, your s.e.x has intuitions. One of them, one of yours, I have painted. And there it is!”
The bell sounded below.
”Ha!” said Garstin, turning his head sharply.
He listened for an instant. Then he said:
”I'll bet you anything you like that's the king himself.”
”The king?”
”In the underworld. Did you walk here?”
”Yes.”
”He must have seen you. He's followed you. What a lark!”
His eyes shone with a sort of malicious glee.
”There goes the bell again! Beryl, I'll have him up. We'll show him himself.”
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