“Yes.”
She fixed her eyes on him, and added:
“He is painting a living bronze.”
“Somebody very handsome?” said Lady Sellingworth, glancing across the house to the trio in the box opposite.
“Yes, a man called Nicolas Arabian.”
“What a curious name!” said Lady Sellingworth, still looking towards the opposite box. “Is it an Englishman?”
“No. I don’t know his nationality. But he makes a magnificent model.”
“Oh, he’s a model!” said Craven, also looking at the box opposite.
“He isn’t a professional model. Dick Garstin doesn’t pay him to sit. I only mean that he is a marvellous subject for a portrait and sits well. Dick happened to see him and asked him to sit. Dick paints the people he wants to paint, not those who want to be painted by him. But he’s a really big man. You ought to know him.”
She said the last words to Lady Sellingworth, who replied: