“Of course,” agreed Whittemore.  “If I remember, she was ’the loveliest creature you had ever seen.’  And after that there were others—­a score of them at least, each lovelier than the one before.”

“They make up my life,” said Gregson, more seriously than he had yet spoken.  “They’re the only thing I can draw and do well.  I’d think an editor was mad if he asked me to do something without a pretty woman in it.  God bless ’em, I hope I’ll go on seeing them forever.  When I can’t see beauty in woman I want to die.”

“And you always want to see it in the superlative degree.”

“I insist upon it.  If she lacks something, as Donna Isobel wanted color, I imagine that it is there, and she is perfect!  But this one that I saw to-night is perfect!  Now what I want to know is this, Who the deuce is she!”

—­“where can she be found, and will she sit for a ‘Burke,’ two or three miscellaneous, and a ‘study’ for the annual sale,” struck in Whittemore.  “Is that it?”

“Exactly.  You’ve a natural ability for hitting the nail on the head, Phil.”

“And Burke told you to take a rest.”

Gregson offered his cigarettes.

“Yes, Burke is a good-natured, poetic old soul who has a horror of spiders, snakes, and sky-scrapers.  He said to me:  ’Greggy, go and seek nature in some quiet, secluded place, and forget everything for a fortnight or two except your clothes and half a dozen cases of beer.’  Rest!  Nature!  Beer!  Think of those cheerful suggestions, Phil, while I was dreaming of Valencia, of Donna Isobels, and places where Nature cuts up as though she had been taking champagne all her life.  Gad, your letter came just in time!”

“And I told you little enough in that,” said Philip, quickly, rising and pacing uneasily back and forth across the cabin floor.  “I gave you promise of excitement, and urged you to join me if you could.  And why?  Because—­”

He turned sharply, and faced Gregson across the table.

“I wanted you to come because the thing that happened down in Valencia, and that other at Rio, isn’t a circumstance to the hell that’s going to cut loose pretty soon up here—­and I’m in need of help.  Understand?  It’s not fun—­this time.  I’m playing a single hand in what looks like a losing game.  If I ever needed a fighter in my life I need one now.  That’s why I sent for you.”

Gregson shoved back his chair and rose to his feet.  He was a head shorter than his companion, of almost delicate physique.  Yet there was something in the cold gray-blue of his eyes, a peculiar hardness of his chin, that compelled one to look at him twice and rendered first judgment unsafe.  His slim fingers closed like steel about Philip’s.

“Now you’re coming down to business, Phil,” he exclaimed.  “I’ve been waiting with the patience of Job—­or of little Bobby Tuckett, if you remember him, who began courting Minnie Sheldon seven years ago—­and married her the day after I got your letter.  I was too busy figuring out what you hadn’t written to go to the wedding.  I tried to read between the lines, and fell down completely.  I’ve been thinking all the way up from Le Pas, and I’m still at sea.  You called.  I came.  What’s up?”