"But how in the dickens," Tom went on, "did you get Mrs. Herman to pose for you?"
"Great Heavens!" ejaculated Fenton, "don't say that to anybody else. I had no end of studies of her, made long ago; but I didn't suppose I had followed them closely enough for it to be recognized."
"You don't mean," Tom returned, "that that side and arm are done from old studies!"
Fenton had a delicate dislike to literal falsehood. It was not a question of morality directly, but one of taste. Albeit, since taste is simply morality remote from the springs of action, it perhaps came to much the same thing in the end. He felt now, however, that the time for the selfish indulgence of his individual whims was past, and that he owed to Ninitta the grace of a downright and hearty falsehood.
"Why, of course," he said, "I had one or two models to help me out; but the inspiration came from the old studies."
"And she didn't pose for you?" Tom persisted incredulously.
"Pose for me?" echoed Fenton, impatiently. "Why, man alive, think what you're saying! Of course, she didn't pose for me. She never has posed for anybody since she was married."
"And a devilish shame it is, too," responded Tom.
This conversation, which took place Wednesday afternoon, made Fenton extremely uneasy. Fate seemed to have worked against him. He had painted the picture to go to the New York Exhibition, where he hoped it would be sold without ever coming under the eye of Herman at all. He reflected now that Ninitta had posed for Helen and for several of his brother painters, while it was scarcely credible that the likeness which Bently had perceived at a glance should escape the trained artist's eye of her husband; and it seemed to him now, little less than madness to have brought the picture here at all.
Upon second thought, however, he reflected that even were the picture recognized, no great harm would probably come of it. No one would be likely to speak on the subject to Herman, and, least of all, was there a probability that the latter would confess that he was aware of what his wife had done. Herman's condemnation, Fenton said to himself with a shrug, he must, if worst came to worst, endure; this was to be set down with other unpleasantnesses which belong to the unpleasant conditions of life as they exist in these days. As long as there was no open scandal, he could ignore whatever lay beneath the surface, and he assured himself that in any event it were wisest, as he had long ago learned, to carry things off with a high hand.