Was that why when she had seen Arabian for the first time she had resolved to get to know him? She had called him a living bronze, but she had thought of him from the first, perhaps, with ardour as flesh and blood.
And yet at moments he repelled her. She, who was so audacious, did not want to show herself with him at the Ritz, to walk down Piccadilly with him in daylight. As she had said to Dick Garstin, an atmosphere seemed to hang about Arabian—an unsafe atmosphere. She did not know where she was in it. She lost her bearings, could not see her way, heard steps and voices that sounded strange. And the end of it all was—“I don’t know.” When she thought of Arabian always that sentence was in her mind—“I don’t know.”
She was strangely excited. And now Craven came to her. And he attracted her, too, but in such a different way!
Suddenly London was interesting! And “I don’t know when we shall go back to Paris!” she said to Miss Cronin.
“Is it the Wallace Collection, Beryl?” murmured “Old Fanny,” with plaintive suspicion over her cup of camomile tea.
“Yes, it’s the Wallace Collection,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
And she went away to dress for her dinner with Dick Garstin.
She met him at a tiny and very French restaurant in Conduit Street, where the cooking was absolutely first rate, where there was no sound of music, and where very few English people went. There were only some eight or ten tables in the cosy, warm little room, and when Miss Van Tuyn entered it there were not a dozen people dining. Dick Garstin was not there. It was just like him to be late and to keep a woman waiting. But he had engaged a table in the corner of the room on the right, away from the window. And Miss Van Tuyn was shown to it by a waiter, and sat down. On the way she had bought The Westminster Gazette. She opened it, lit a cigarette, and began to glance at the news. There happened to be a letter from Paris in which the writer described a new play which had just been produced in an outlying theatre. Miss Van Tuyn read the account. She began reading in a casual mood, but almost immediately all her attention was grasped and held tight. She forgot where she was, let her cigarette go out, did not see Garstin when he came in from the street. When he came up and laid a hand on her arm she started violently.
“Who’s—Dick!”
An angry look came into her face.