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Updated: June 16, 2025
"Even men sometimes have instincts," he said, turning round. "Yes?" "May I use your telephone?" "Of course! But do you " "Where Oh, there it is!" He went to it and called up the bureau. Then he said: "Sir Seymour Portman is speaking from Miss Van Tuyn's sitting-room . . . is that Mr. Henriques? Please tell me, has that man, Arabian, of whom we spoke just now, called again?"
We'll get him out of the country one way or another." She accompanied him to the outer door of the apartment. When he had gone out she shut it behind him, and he heard the click of a bolt being pushed home. Before leaving the hotel Sir Seymour again sought his discreet friend Henriques, to whom he gave Miss Van Tuyn's note. "So the fellow has been?" he said. "Yes, Sir Seymour."
Arabian examined this tragedy, which was one of Garstin's finest bits of work in Miss Van Tuyn's estimation, with careful and close attention, but without showing the faintest symptom of either pity or disgust. "In my opinion that is well painted," was his comment. "They do get to be like that. And then they starve. And that is because they have no brains."
He spoke a few words, then returned to his table with Miss Van Tuyn's parting sentence in his ears; "When you have dined come and smoke your Toscana with us." As he ate his excellently cooked meal he felt pleasantly warmed and even the least bit excited. This was a wholly unexpected encounter.
And then he had again forgotten the hour, and had stood there talking about the ultra-modern young people of London as if he were very far away from them, were much older, much simpler, even much more akin to her, than they were. He had prefaced his remarks with the words, "I had forgotten all about them!" and she had felt it was true. Beryl Van Tuyn's name had not been mentioned between them.
"I'll be back in a minute," he said. "Have a good stare at my stuff, and if you don't like it why, damn it, you're free to say so." Miss Van Tuyn's look had sent him away down the stairs to the ground floor studio. Arabian had not missed her message, but he was apparently quite impassive, and did not show that he had noticed the painter's ill humour.
On the morning after Miss Van Tuyn's telegram to Paris Fanny Cronin arrived, with Bourget's latest book in her hand, and later they settled in at Claridge's. Miss Cronin went to bed, and Miss Van Tuyn, who had no engagement for that evening, went presently to the telephone.
But she looked exactly as usual, and was talking with animation, and he realized that her long habit of the world enabled her to wear a mask at will. Or was she less sensitive in such matters than he was? "How preoccupied you are!" said Miss Van Tuyn's voice in his ear. "You see I was right. Golf ruins the social qualities in a man." Then Craven resolutely set himself to be sociable.
I won't ask anything else of you; only that." "But I won't promise. I can't." "Why not?" "Because because I don't know what I am going to do, what I might do." She looked down, then added in a low voice; "He fascinates me." For the first time since she had come into the room there was a helpless sound in Miss Van Tuyn's voice, a sound that was wholly girlish, absolutely, transparently sincere.
Miss Van Tuyn's face became very hard. "Well, then, Adela " She paused. Suddenly there had come into her mind the thought of a possible way of forcing the confidence which Lady Sellingworth refused to give her. Should she take it? She hesitated. Arabian's will was upon her even here in this quiet drawing-room. His large eyes seemed fixed upon her.
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