Milly, of course, had no ideas about art beyond a faint sentimental tendency to regard it as a mysterious and glorious thing which one could not wholly escape in Boston; while her thrifty New England nurture enabled her to appreciate perfectly the force of the considerations Orin brought forward.
"I am glad you are getting commissions," she said, "but it must be nice to have the artists like your work, for after all, don't you think rich people depend a good deal upon what the artists say?"
"Oh yes, they do, some," admitted the sculptor.
He puffed his cigar, and with the aid of a penknife performed upon his nails certain operations of the toilet which are more usually attended to in private. Milly sat nervously trying to think of something to say, and wondering what had brought the sculptor to visit her. She was too kindly to suspect that possibly he had come because in her company he could enjoy the pleasure of giving free rein to his self-conceit. The words of her companion of the afternoon had given her a new sense of the honor of a visit from her prospective brother-in-law, although this increased her diffidence rather than her pleasure.
"Was Mr. Fenton there this afternoon?" she asked, at length, simply for the sake of saying something.
The face of her companion darkened.
"Damn Fenton!" he returned, with coarse brutality. "He's a cad and a snob; he says Herman ought to have made the America, and he abuses my model without ever having seen it."
The remark of Fenton's which had given offence to Stanton had been made at the club in comment upon a photograph of the model which somebody was showing.
"The only capitol thing about it," Fenton had said, "is the headgear."
The remark was severe rather than witty, and it was its severity which had given it wings to bear it to the sculptor's ears.