"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.
The talk at dinner flowed on easily enough, Arthur conversing in the strain which of old Helen had been pleased to call "amiable," and which fretted her by being conventional and not wholly sincere. She liked the artist best when he spoke without restraint, even though she might not agree with his extravagances and often detected a trace of artificiality in his clever epigrams. It seemed to her that the whole tendency of Edith's influence upon her husband was towards restraint, yet she could not be sure whether the ultimate result upon Fenton's character might not be beneficial.
"It depends upon Arthur himself," Helen mused. "If he is strong enough to endure the struggle of adapting his honest belief to her honest belief, he will be the better for it. I hope his love of ease will not make him evade the difficulty. It never used to occur to me how little I really know Arthur, so that I cannot tell how this will be."
When the host was enjoying his after dinner cigar, which by especial indulgence upon the part of Edith he was allowed to smoke in the parlor, Helen disclosed the object of her visit.
"Do you remember," she asked, "that model who posed for my May, and was to come to you next week?"
"Ninitta? Of course. What of her?"