“Garstin is passing through a phase just now. He paints from the Cafe Royal.”
“Oh!”
He paused, and his brown face took on a look of rather hard meditation.
“Does he never paint what they call decent people?” he inquired. “One may occasionally spend an hour at the Cafe Royal—especially if one is not English—without belonging to the bas-fonds. I do not know whether Mr. Dick Garstin understands that.”
“Of course he does,” she said, instantly grasping the meaning of his hesitation. “But there is one portrait—of a man—which I don’t think you have looked at.”
“Where?”
“On that big easel with its back to us. If you want a decent person”—she spoke with a slightly ironical intonation—“go and see what Garstin can do with decency.”
“I will.”
And he walked over to the side of the room opposite to the grand piano, and went to stand in front of the easel she had indicated. She stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. Finally he said:
“I think Mr. Dick Garstin is a humorist. Do not you?”