“There! Now we’re cozy!” said Garstin. “But I wish Sir Seymour you’d join us!”
“If you will allow me I will smoke a light cigar I have here.”
And Sir Seymour drew out a cigar-case and lit up a pale and long Havannah.
“That’s better!” said Garstin, drinking. “How’s Beryl, my boy?”
“I have not seen Miss Van Tuyn to-day,” said Arabian. “But I hope to see her to-morrow.”
He looked at Sir Seymour, and there seemed to be a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.
“DO you know Miss Van Tuyn?” he asked.
“Very slightly,” said Sir Seymour. “I have met her once or twice in London. She is a very beautiful creature.”
There was constraint in the room. Sir Seymour felt it strongly and feared that it came from something in him. Evidently he was not a very good actor. He found it difficult to be easy and agreeable with a man whom he longed to get hold of by the collar and thrash till it was time to hand him over to the police. But he resolved to make a strong effort to conceal what he could not conquer. And he began to talk to Arabian. Afterwards he could not remember what they had talked about just then. He could only remember the strangeness which he had realized as he sat there smoking his Havannah, the strangeness of life. That he should be smoking and chatting with the scoundrel who had changed Adela’s existence, who had tricked her, robbed her, driven her into the solitude which had lasted ten years! And why was he doing it? He did not absolutely know. But his instinct had told him to stay on in Garstin’s studio when everything else in him, revolting, had shrunk from meeting this beast, unless and until he could deal with him properly.
He had smoked about half his cigar, and the constraint in the room seemed to him to be lessened, though not abolished, when the conversation took a turn quite unexpected by him. And all that was said in the studio from that moment remained firmly fixed in his memory. Garstin got up to fetch some more whisky for Arabian, whose glass was now empty, and as he came back with the decanter he said to Arabian: