December Love Part 85

In her silence now she was trying to get a strong hold on herself. The first shock of astonishment, and almost of horror, had pa.s.sed. She was more sharply conscious now of Garstin in connexion with herself. At last she spoke again.

"Of course you realize, d.i.c.k, that such a portrait as that is an outrage. It's a master work, I believe, but it is an outrage. You cannot exhibit it."

"But I shall. This man, Arabian, isn't known."

"How can we tell that?"

"Do you know a living creature he knows or who knows him?"

"Everyone has acquaintances. Everyone almost has friends. He must certainly have both."

"G.o.d knows who or where they are."

"You cannot exhibit it," she repeated obstinately.

"I hate art in kid gloves. But this is too merciless. It is more. It is a libel."

"That's just where you're wrong."

"No."

"Beryl, my girl, you are lying. That's no use with me."

"I am not lying!" she said with hot anger.

Suddenly she felt that tears had come into her eyes.

"How hateful you are!" she exclaimed.

She felt frightened under the eyes of the portrait. Garstin's revelation had struck upon her like a blow. She felt dazed by it. Yet she longed to hit back. She wanted to defend Arabian, perhaps because she felt that she needed defence.

Garstin came abruptly round the sofa and sat down by her side.

"What's up?" he said in a kinder voice.

"Why do you paint like that? It's abominable!"

"Tell me the honest truth--G.o.d's own truth, as they call it, I don't know why--is that picture fine, is it my best work, or isn't it?"

"I've told you already. It's a technical masterpiece and a moral outrage. You have taken a man for a model and painted a beast."

"Beryl," he said almost solemnly, "believe it or not, as you can, that _is_ Arabian!"

He pointed at the picture as he spoke. His keen eyes, half shut, were fixed upon it.

"That _is_ the real man, and what you see is only the appearance he chooses to give of himself."

"How do you know? How can you know that?"

"Haven't I the power to show men and women as in essence they are?"

His eyes travelled round the big studio slowly, travelled from canvas to canvas, from the battered old siren of the streets to the girl who was dreaming of sins not yet committed; from Cora waiting for her prey to the judge who had condemned his.

"Haven't I? And don't you know it?"

"You are wrong this time," she said with mutinous determination, but still with the tears in her eyes. "You couldn't sum up Arabian. You tried and tried again. And now at last you have forced yourself to paint him. You have got angry. That's it. You have got furious with yourself and with him, because of your own impotence, and you have painted him in a pa.s.sion."

"Oh, no!"

He shook his head.

"I never felt colder, more completely master of myself and my pa.s.sions, than when I painted that portrait."

"But you asked me to find out his secret. You pushed me into his company that I might find it out and help you."

"I did!"

"Well!" she said, almost triumphantly, "I have never found it out."

"Oh, yes, you have."

"No. He is the most reserved, uncommunicative man I have ever known."

"Subconsciously you have found it out, and you have conveyed it to me.

And that is the result. I suspected what the man was the first time I laid eyes on him. When I got him here I seemed to get off the track of him. For he's very deceptive--somehow. Yes, he's d.a.m.ned deceptive. But then you put me wise. Your growing terror of him put me wise."

He looked hard into her eyes.

"Beryl, my girl, your s.e.x has intuitions. One of them, one of yours, I have painted. And there it is!"

The bell sounded below.

"Ha!" said Garstin, turning his head sharply.

He listened for an instant. Then he said:

"I'll bet you anything you like that's the king himself."

"The king?"

"In the underworld. Did you walk here?"

"Yes."

"He must have seen you. He's followed you. What a lark!"

His eyes shone with a sort of malicious glee.

"There goes the bell again! Beryl, I'll have him up. We'll show him himself."