Chapter 8

"Mr. Herman sent for me the other afternoon," she began again, forcing herself to speak calmly. "My model Ninitta is very fond of him, and chose to be jealous of his praise of my work. It might have all gone over without an outburst, I suppose, if she had not had her attention called to the fact that I had modeled his head for December. Why she had never happened to notice it I don't know; she was in the studio constantly."

"Not when he was there?" queried Dr. Ashton, holding up his graceful, antique wine-glass and admiring it.

"No, not when he was there," repeated his wife. "She had pounded off the head when he sent for me with a mallet she had picked up in his studio. I never saw him in such a rage. She was gone when I got there. She didn't make any attempt to conceal it. She came stalking melodramatically into his studio with the mallet and laid it down. 'There,' said she, 'now kill me. I have broken her work.' It was like a fashion magazine story. He thought at first she had gone mad."

"So she had. Women are always insane when they are jealous. I wish I had Arthur's knack at epigram, and I'd make that sound original."

"He says he was very harsh," Helen continued, "though I fancy he could not be quite that in any circumstances. It was very hard," she added with a sigh. "It was like looking at a dead child to see my best work ruined. It was really a part of myself."

"But can't it be repaired? It was in the clay, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I fear for my exhausted enthusiasm. I can never do it as it was before. My poor, unlucky December."

She toyed with her glass absently, apparently for the moment forgetting her companion, who continued his supper with no less relish than before. He watched her keenly, however, fully aware that there was more to be told. He was a man too accustomed to follow any desire or indulge any whim not to notice appreciatively, as he had noticed many times before, how beautiful were the curves of his wife's arms and throat, and with what grace her head was poised. He had once defined a liberal man as one who could appreciate his own wife, and he would have been far more insensible than he was, if, with this beautiful woman before him he had not been, judged by his own standard, extremely liberal.

"And this has what to do with the question of our relations being known?" he asked.

She started from her reverie, the red again showing faintly in her cheek.

"It is hardly fair," she answered in a tone softer and lower than that in which she had been speaking, "to tell you all that Mr. Herman said. He wishes to marry me."

"And you wish you were free to have it so?"

There was once more a pause. Helen busied herself in an elaborate arrangement of the torn lettuce leaves upon her plate, seemingly concentrating all her thoughts upon forming them into an intricate figure.

"Will," she said, suddenly, lifting her eyes and leaning towards him, "I do not know how to make you understand. I haven't succeeded so well in my attempts thus far in life as to be very sanguine of doing it now. You do not know how ashamed and contemptible I felt for being party to the deception that made it possible for him to speak so to me. He was so honest, so earnest; he was so unconscious of the barriers between us. I felt that I had done him such an irreparable wrong by concealing the truth. He had a right to know that I am a married woman."

"Did you tell him?"

"No; but I must. I want to be free from the promise we made to each other."

"It all comes," returned her husband without any show of irritation, "from my telling Fenton."

"I cannot see what that has to do with it. I like the absence from questioning, the avoidance of gossip, as much as you can; but it makes me feel as if I were a living lie to have Mr. Herman bringing his honest love to me to be met only by deception. It is cruel and it is wrong."

"That depends entirely upon how you define wrong," retorted Dr. Ashton coolly. "I do not see why it is wrong for me to decline to sacrifice my convenience to Mr. Herman's sentiment. But without going into the question of metaphysics, let us look at the matter reasonably. Do you love Mr. Herman?"

Notwithstanding the studied nonchalance of his tone, a glance into his eyes might have shown Helen how much importance he attached to her answer. A woman is peculiarly dangerous when she is telling one man that another loves her. The masculine greed of possession is aroused by the mere thought of a possible rival, and Dr. Ashton was conscious at this moment of a kindling desire himself to win Helen's love, which he knew perfectly well had never been his.

"That is not at all relevant," was her reply, her eyes downcast. "The question of honesty is enough now. At least I respect Mr. Herman, and I must treat him squarely, as you would say. You have always told me to be 'a square fellow,' you know," she added, raising her glance with a faint smile.

"But if you tell him," said her husband, with a subtle tinge of impatience in his tone, "others must know. You can't go on letting one after another into the secret without its soon becoming public property."

"Why not then?" she responded. "I wonder we have been able to keep it so long. It is sure to be known now you have come home. I do not mean to proclaim it upon the housetops; but to let it work out if it will. What harm can it do?"

"It will harm me. My life is not so secluded as yours is, Helen, It will make things confoundedly awkward. I shall have to go about giving endless explanations. Besides, here is Arthur's wife. I particularly don't want her to know."

"Why not? It is precisely that I was coming to. She seems to feel far more kindly to me than I should have supposed possible. I can't lie to her, Will. She has already asked me questions about my past life hard to answer. I want to tell her, so that we may have an honest basis for our friendship. I don't want to lose my hold on her."

"Nor on Arthur," acquiesced he gravely. "It is for that reason that I say you had better not tell her. I usually know what I am saying, do I not? I tell you it is for your own sake that I warn you to be quiet. Arthur isn't going to be held in the leash very long by that piece of china-ware piety, and it is to you he will naturally turn for sympathy. Don't spoil your chance of his friendship by breaking with her yet."

"Will," his wife said, with a glitter in her eyes he knew of old, "sometimes you talk like a very fiend incarnate."

"That," he replied rising, "is precisely what I am. There are a few rare, but fairly well authenticated cases on record, Helen, where a man under stress of circumstances, has been able to keep his own counsel; women without a confidant go mad. For your own sake you'd better trust me, now that Arthur isn't available; so I'll come and see you again. I am obliged to you for this jolly little supper. Your salads always were perfection. I'd like to stay and have you make me some coffee, but I have an engagement at twelve. Good-night."

XXI.

HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH. Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.--2.

When Grant Herman attempted to speak with Mrs. Greyson at the Fenton's reception, he had more in view than simply the desire of being near the woman he loved. He was full of trouble and bewilderment, and instinctively turned toward her for aid and sympathy.

The scene between himself and Helen, to which the latter had alluded in her conversation with Dr. Ashton, was of far deeper import than her words might have seemed to imply. In the first shock of discovering that her work was broken she had been so overcome, that although she struggled bravely to conceal her feelings, she had excited the sculptor's keenest pity; and it not unnaturally followed that in attempting to express his sympathy he found himself telling his love before he was aware. He had determined to be silent upon this subject. Uncertain what were Helen's feelings towards him and restrained by a sense of loyalty to the bond which united him to Ninitta, he had resolved to bury his love in his own breast, at least until time gave him opportunity of honorably declaring it. Now circumstances betrayed him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her. It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the woman he loved, and he blindly felt that Ninitta had struck at himself through his most sensitive feelings. He renounced all the fealty to which he had been held by a sense of honor, and he now poured out to Helen the full tide of his passionate love.

The sculptor was not a man to be lightly moved, but it is these calm, grave natures that once aroused are most irresistible. His passionate outburst took Helen unaware; she scarcely knew what she did, and she became suddenly aware of a truth so overwhelming that every thing else faded into insignificance beside it.

"I love you!" he cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, that she too loved him.

It seemed to her that some power above her own volition ruled her, as in moments of high excitement the body sometimes appears to declare its independence of the will, and to act wholly by its own decisions. She was aware that she raised her eyes to his, although she would have given much to avoid his glance; and she knew that it was from what he read there that he took courage to fold her in his embrace.

Yet with his arms about her and his piercing kisses upon her face, Helen felt as if sinking helplessly into a mighty ocean; as if all struggles must be unavailing, and she could only yield to the resistless love which engulfed her.

From this first feeling of powerlessness, however, her strong nature sprang with a sharp recoil. She was too noble to surrender without a struggle. She would not even think whether she loved this man; that might be considered upon some safe vantage ground; now all energy must be concentrated upon escaping from the deadly peril in which she found herself.

Helen had freed herself as far as she was able from the marriage bond which had so galled her, and she was glad to forget that such a tie had ever existed, but she yet remembered that she was still a wife, and the kiss of a man not her husband overwhelmed her with shuddering humiliation and fear. She struggled from her lover's embrace with such an expression of terror upon her face, that he started back amazed and grieved.

He began to stammer confused words of contrition, of sorrow, of love, and of supplication.

"How could you!" she gasped. "Oh, leave me!"

There came into her excited mind a way of escape, upon which, even though it brought with it a sense of baseness, she seized in despair.

"Ninitta," she said. "Ninitta!"

He gave her a look of pain which went to her very heart. He did not move or answer, but his whole soul seemed to look through his dark eyes in pitiful appeal.

"Go," she continued, but in a hurried voice which betrayed her agitation. "Leave me now. Oh, I cannot bear it!"

And crushed with pain and shame, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

Herman made a step towards her, but instantly she recovered herself, looking up with swimming eyes and lips that quivered despite her utmost effort.

"No," she said, "do not touch me. You must go. I cannot bear another word. Forgive me," she went on rapidly, as he hesitated, still with those appealing eyes fixed upon her. "Oh, forgive me, but go."

He turned slowly and moved towards the door. The broken bas-relief, with its beautiful mutilated figure caught his eye, and seemed again to remind him that he had at last a right to speak to Helen, unhampered by the thought of Ninitta. He looked back as if he would even now disobey her and plead his love anew. But her eyes refused his prayer before it could be uttered. He lingered still an instant.

"I cannot go," he broke out suddenly. "I love you! I must stay! I must at least have an answer. Do you think a man could kiss you once and then leave you like this?"

She shivered as if she felt anew his passionate embrace and shrank from it. She threw her glance about as to discover some means of escape. The gesture, the look, overwhelmed him with sudden remorse. He trusted himself not for a single backward look now, but rushed out of the studio, leaving her sitting there like the princess of the fairy tale who overcame the genii only by recourse to immortal fire which consumed her also.

Alone in his studio the sculptor strode up and down, struggling with the emotion which mastered him. He debated with himself whether Helen loved him or not; yet the more carefully he recalled his interview with her, the more impossible he found it to determine. But hope plucked courage out of this very uncertainty, and clung to the belief that had not Helen in her heart some affection for him, she could not have been so touched.

But what of Ninitta? He threw back his head and walked down the studio, his steps sounding sharply upon the hard cement floor. What of Ninitta? He had absurdly dallied with his supposed obligations to her long enough. Now, at least, after this outrage, he repeated to himself, he was free. He was at liberty now--if indeed he had not always been--to consider what he owed to himself; what to the woman he loved.

He recalled the hot words he had spoken to the model earlier in the afternoon when the anger of discovery was fresh upon him, and he felt a pang of self-reproach. He could not but know how poignant to Ninitta must be the grief of giving him up, although he assured himself that in the long years of separation she must have become accustomed to live without him, and that her grief would be rather fancied than real. Yet he was too tender-hearted to be wholly at ease after all his reasoning. He at last started out to find Ninitta, perhaps to comfort her, perhaps to cast her off forever. At least to come to some definite conclusion of their doubtful relations.

But Ninitta was not to be found. She was not in her attic; nor did she return that night, nor the next day, nor yet the following; and it was to tell of the model's disappearance, and to ask aid in tracing her, that Herman had wished to speak to Helen at the Fenton's reception.

XXII.

UPON A CHURCH BENCH. Much Ado about Nothing; iii.--3.

Herman did not see Helen for several days after the reception, but she came down to the studio Sunday afternoon to begin the repairing of her mutilated bas-relief. The sculptor heard her step pass his door, and felt a thrill at the sound for which he had longingly waited every waking hour since he had heard Helen go out upon the night of Ninitta's disappearance.

He waited what seemed to him a long time, forcing himself to perform certain trifling things needful in the studio, yet Mrs. Greyson had only been able to get fairly to work before she heard his footstep, and then his tap upon her door.

He entered the studio almost hesitatingly, and after the usual greetings stood looking gravely at the disfigured clay.

"I began to think you were never coming to restore it," he remarked, breaking at last the silence.

"I could not bear to touch it," she returned, not caring to confess that she had also wished to avoid him until time should have restored his usual self-control. "But I determined yesterday to begin this morning, only strangely enough I went to church for the first time since I came from Europe."

"Ah!" returned Herman smiling. "I often go to church when I am not too busy."

"I hardly supposed that a Pagan was guilty of going to any church where he could not worship Pasht."

"One can worship whatever deity he pleases in whatever temple, I suppose," was his rejoinder. "I'm catholic in my tastes. I do not so much mind what people worship, if they are only sincere about it."

"It must be a great comfort to believe every thing, if one only could."

"There is often danger," he observed, "that we assume it to be a weakness to believe any thing."

"It is, I'm afraid," replied she, turning her face from him and seemingly intent upon her modeling.

"At least we believe in work," Herman answered, "else we are not artists. You certainly find joy and support in your art."

"Yes," Helen said with a sigh; "but I fancy the joy of creation, great as it is, can never be so satisfying to a woman as to a man. It is humiliating to confess--or it is presumptuous to boast, I am not sure which--but a woman is never so fully an artist as a man. He is in great moments all artist; but a woman is never able to lay herself aside even in her most imaginative moods."

"I cannot think you wholly right," her master returned smiling; "but to go back a little, at least faith is woman's peculiar province and prerogative. We seem nowadays to pride ourselves upon being superior to belief in any thing; but it is really a poor enough hypocrisy. If we really believed nothing, should we ever give up a single selfish desire or combat any impulse that seizes us. For my part, I am glad to find men better than their professions. But this," he added with his genial smile, "is more of a sermon, very likely, than you heard at church."

"I at least agree with it better than the one I heard at church this morning. The preacher patronized the Deity so that he shocked me."

"That troubles me at church," Herman assented; "preachers are so irreverent."

Helen stepped back to observe the effects of the work she was doing.

"Do you think," she ventured, "that it would be possible for me to induce Ninitta to pose again for the May? If I told her that I am not angry, that I understand, and that----"

"But Ninitta is gone!" exclaimed the sculptor, suddenly recalled to present difficulties. "I have not been able to find her since the day she did this."

"Gone!" echoed Helen in dismay; "and you cannot find her?"

Herman related in detail the steps he had taken to trace Ninitta, all of which had thus far proved unavailing. He had endeavored to avoid publicity, but he already began to fear that it would be necessary to call detectives to his aid.

"Not yet," Helen said. "Let me try first. Have you seen Mr. Fenton?"

"No; why? I have been very cautious. I have told nobody but Fred Rangely."

Helen reflected a moment. Her woman's instinct told her that it was not likely Ninitta would put any great distance between herself and the sculptor. The model could have but few acquaintances in the city, and as she would need support it seemed probable she might try posing for some of the artists. As this thought crossed her mind, Helen remembered that Ninitta had promised to pose for Fenton when no longer wanted for the has-relief. It was therefore possible that Fenton might know something of the whereabouts of the missing girl; and in any case Helen had been so used to consulting the artist in any perplexity, that it was but natural for her thoughts to turn to him now.

"Let me try," she repeated. "It will be less likely to excite talk if I look for her; she was my model. Trust the search to me for a day or two."

He was only too glad to do so; glad to be released from the burden of anxiety, as by virtue of some subtle faith in Mrs. Greyson he was; glad of any thing in which he might obey her; glad above all of any bond of common interest which might draw them nearer to each other, even if it were search for the woman who stood between them.

On her way homeward Helen went into Studio Building, but before she had climbed half way to Fenton's room, she encountered Dr. Ashton.

"It is of no use," was his greeting. "He isn't in. His wife has probably taken him to church."

"He was at church this morning," Helen answered, putting her hand into the one Dr. Ashton extended. "I saw him."

"Did you go to church? What a lark."

"It was rather a lark," she assented; "only I got wretchedly blue before the service was done."

"What church was it? Mrs. Fenton looks as if she'd poise dizzily on high church altitudes like the angel on St. Angelo."

"So she does; she goes to the Nativity."

"How did Arthur look?"

"Amused at first; then bored; then cross; and finally, when the sermon was well under way, indignant."

"And his wife?"

"His wife, Will," Helen said with a sudden enthusiasm, "looked like a saint. She really believes all these fables. I wish I did."

"It will be some fun to watch Arthur's conversion and backsliding," Dr. Ashton observed, "if he really gets far enough along to be able to backslide. Where are you going?"

"To see Arthur. I have an errand."

"Do you object to my walking with you?" he asked with a deference rare enough to attract her notice.

The sun was setting, and the trees on the Common, as yet showing but faintest signs of coming buds, stood out against the saffron sky. The long shadows stretched softly over the dull ground, while every slight prominence was gilded and transfigured by the golden glow which flooded from the west. The atmosphere had that peculiar brilliancy characteristic of the season, while the cool and bracing air was full of that champagne-like exhilaration in which lies at once the fascination and the fatality of the New England climate.

It was some time before either broke the silence.

"How I wish," at length began Helen wistfully.

"That shows," spoke her husband, as she left the sentence unfinished, "that you are still under forty. When you have quadrupled your decades you'll thank your stars for deliverances and ask for nothing more."

"When I get to that stage, then," she returned, "I'll take poison."

"Is that a hint?"

"Life is bad enough now," she continued without heeding the interruption, "but better a bitter savor than none at all."

"You should devote yourself to cultivating the approval of conscience as I do. I only do what I think to be right, you know."

"But think right whatever you do."

"Not quite that," returned the Doctor with a laugh, "but the approval of my conscience--or of my reason, which stands in its place--is necessary to my happiness, so I change my principles whenever my acts don't accord with them."

"So do a great many persons," she responded; "perhaps most of us, for that matter, only we are seldom honest enough to own it."

"By the way," queried her companion, as they approached her destination, "how came Mrs. Fenton so quickly domesticated at the Church of the Nativity?"

"There is a young man there--a deacon or a monk; I never know these high church terms; they are usually faded out pieces of Romanism--that once wrote an article which enjoyed the honor of being interred in the Princeton Review when her uncle was one of its editors."

They reached the doorsteps and Dr. Ashton said good-by. Then he turned back.

"By the by," he said. "I walked up with you to make you invite me to supper again. I enjoyed the last time very much."

"Did you?" returned his wife, rather carelessly. "Come to-morrow--no, not until Thursday night."

"Very well. I am to dine here then, and I'll come and give you an account of my visit."

XXIII.

HEART-SICK WITH THOUGHT. Two Gentlemen of Verona; i.--I.

The Fentons were just going to dinner when Helen arrived, and she was persuaded to dine with them. She was not without some curiosity to observe her friend in his new relations, and she also found herself attracted by Edith, although the two women had apparently little in common.