“I can give a pretty good guess,” Halson said, running his merry eyes over our faces.
“Anybody can give a good guess,” Rulledge said. “Wanhope is doing it now.”
“Don’t let me interrupt.” Halson turned to him politely.
“Not at all. I’d rather hear your guess, if you know Braybridge better than I,” Wanhope said.
“Well,” Halson compromised, “perhaps I’ve known him longer.” He asked, with an effect of coming to business: “Where were you?”
“Tell him, Rulledge,” Minver ordered, and Rulledge apparently asked nothing better. He told him, in detail, all we knew from any source, down to the moment of Wanhope’s arrested conjecture.
“He did leave you at an anxious point, didn’t he?” Halson smiled to the rest of us at Rulledge’s expense, and then said: “Well, I think I can help you out a little. Any of you know the lady?”
“By sight, Minver does,” Rulledge answered for us. “Wants to paint her.”
“Of course,” Halson said, with intelligence. “But I doubt if he’d find her as paintable as she looks, at first. She’s beautiful, but her charm is spiritual.”
“Sometimes we try for that,” the painter interposed.