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 “She has undoubted attractions of…a hellish sort…if I may use…the term.”

“She is the strangest looking girl I have ever seen in my life,” replied Helen, who found herself unable to turn her eyes away from Olaf van Noord’s model. “Surely she is not a professional model!”

The chatty reporter (his name was Crockett) confided to Helen Cumberly:

“She is not exactly a professional model, I think, Miss Cumberly, but she is one of the van Noord set, and is often to be seen in the more exclusive restaurants, and sometimes in the Café Royal.”

“She is possibly a member of the theatrical profession?”

“I think not. She is the only really strange figure (if we exclude Olaf) in this group of poseurs. She is half Burmese, I believe, and a native of Moulmein.”

“Most extraordinary creature!” muttered Denise Ryland, focussing upon the Eurasian her gold rimmed glasses—“most extraordinary.” She glanced around at the company in general. “I really begin to feel…more and more as though I were…in a private lunatic…asylum. That picture…beyond doubt is the work…of a madman…a perfect…madman!”

“I, also, begin to be conscious of an uncomfortable sensation,” said Helen, glancing about her almost apprehensively. “Am I dreaming, or did some one else enter the studio, immediately behind that girl?”