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‘It’s better not to take too much art at a time,’ Miss Price
answered.
When they got outside he thanked her warmly for the
trouble she had taken.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she said, a little ungraciously. ‘I do it
because I enjoy it. We’ll go to the Louvre tomorrow if you
like, and then I’ll take you to Durand-Ruel’s.’
‘You’re really awfully good to me.’
‘You don’t think me such a beast as the most of them do.’
‘I don’t,’ he smiled.
‘They think they’ll drive me away from the studio; but
they won’t; I shall stay there just exactly as long as it suits
me. All that this morning, it was Lucy Otter’s doing, I know
it was. She always has hated me. She thought after that I’d
take myself off. I daresay she’d like me to go. She’s afraid I
know too much about her.’
Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made
out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little per-
son, had scabrous intrigues. Then she talked of Ruth Chalice,
the girl whom Foinet had praised that morning.
‘She’s been with every one of the fellows at the studio.
She’s nothing better than a street-walker. And she’s dirty.
She hasn’t had a bath for a month. I know it for a fact.’
Philip listened uncomfortably. He had heard already
that various rumours were in circulation about Miss Chal-
ice; but it was ridiculous to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living
with her mother, was anything but rigidly virtuous. The
woman walking by his side with her malignant lying posi-
tively horrified him.

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