CHAPTER XXII“Do you know, I like him, quite peculiarly,” she confessed frankly, a few days later, when she and Dora had gone into the studio in the late afternoon to find a dozen other persons there. Fenton, the winter’s favourite painter, an enormously fat, blond young man, was on the hearth; Violet Vanderwort was eclipsed in a big chair, her slim hands emerging with her tea-cup; Etelka Alexandrowska, a big Russian woman who had been a concert singer, and her pale little nervous husband were there; the vigorous Etelka at the piano with Kronski apparently quarrelling. One or two other persons were on the divan; among them, with his high laugh and confident chatter, Cy Dwyer.
Hilary had taken her tea from Kostia, with a nod of greeting, and seated herself on a sort of bench beside Von Mand
