“Well she—that woman—sits there alone just like that. She has a purpose. She is waiting for someone to come in who will come some night. And she knows that, and will wait, like a dog before a hole which contains something he intends to kill. This Mr. Dick Garstin is very clever. He is more than a painter; he is an understander.”
“Ah!” she said, intimately pleased by this remark. “You do appreciate him! Garstin is great because he paints not merely for the eye that looks for a sort of painted photograph, but for the eye that demands a summing up of character.”
Arabian looked sideways at her.
“What is that—of character, mademoiselle?”
“A summing up! That is a presentation of the sum total of the character.”
“Oh, yes.”
He looked again at Cora.
“One knows what she is by that,” he said.
Then, standing still, he looked rapidly all round the studio, glancing first at one portrait then at another, with eyes which despite their lustrous softness, seemed to make a sort of prey of whatever they lighted on.
“But they are all women and all of a certain world!” he said, almost suspiciously. “Why is that?”