After an instant of silence she sat down on an old-fashioned sofa covered with dull green and red silk. Just behind it on an easel stood a half-finished portrait of the Cora woman, staring with hungry eyes over an empty tumbler.
“Give me a cigarette, Dick,” she said. “Did he say he would come?”
The painter went over to an old Spanish cabinet and rummaged for a box of cigarettes, with his horsey-looking back turned towards her.
“Did he?” she repeated. “Can’t you tell me what happened when you spoke to him? Why force me to cross-examine you in this indelicate way?”
“Here you are!” said Garstin, turning round with a box of cigarettes.
“Thank you.”
“I gave him my name.”
“He knew it, of course?”
“He didn’t say so. There was no celebrity-start of pleasure. I had to explain that I occasionally painted portraits and that I wished to make a study of his damned remarkable head. Upon that he handed me his card. Here it is.”
And Garstin drew out of a side pocket a visiting-card, which he gave to Miss Van Tuyn.