“She tells everyone I’m going to paint her because she hopes by reiteration to force me to do it. But she isn’t the type that interests me.”
“My dear Dick, I’ll gladly take to morphia or drink if it will help,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I can easily get the Cafe Royal expression. One has only to sit with a glass of something the colour of absinthe in front of one and look sea-sick. I’m perfectly certain that with a week or two’s practice I could look quite as degraded as Cora.”
“Cora?” said Braybrooke, alertly, hearing a name he did not know.
“She’s a horror who goes to the Cafe Royal and whom Dick calls a free woman.”
“Free from all the virtues, I suppose!” said Braybrooke smartly.
“Good-bye both of you!” said Garstin at this juncture.
“But we haven’t got to the Marble Arch!”
“What’s that got to do with it? I’m off.”
He seemed to be going, then stopped, and directed the two pin-points of light at Miss Van Tuyn.
“I flatly refuse to make an Academy portrait of you, so don’t hope for it,” he said. “But if you come along to the studio to-morrow afternoon you may possibly find me at work on a blackmailer.”