It began to rain and I walked fast." Sabatini smiled.

A butler had followed him into the room, bearing on a tray two wine-glasses full of clear yellow liquid.
"Vermouth and one tiny cigarette," Sabatini suggested,--"the best _aperetif_ in the world.

Permit me, Mr.Chetwode--to our better acquaintance!" "I never need an _aperetif_," Arnold answered, raising the wine-glass to his lips, "but I will drink to your toast, with pleasure." Sabatini lit his cigarette, and, leaning slightly against the back of a chair, stood with folded arms looking at the picture over the fireplace.
"Your remark about Fatime suggested reservations," he remarked.

"I wonder why?
I have a good many curios in the room, and some rather wonderful prints, but it was Fatime who held you while you waited.
Yet you are not one of those, I should imagine," he added, blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke, "to whom the call of sex is irresistible." Arnold shook his head.
"No, I don't think so," he admitted simply.

"To tell you the truth, I think that it was the actual presence of the picture here, rather than its suggestions, which interested me most.