"A man is to be excused for being cross abroad," he was wont to observe, "but only a brute is peevish at home."
On the morning following his conversation with Damaris Wainwright, however, he was decidedly out of sorts, and proved but ill company for his wife at the breakfast table. She ventured some simple remark in relation to a plan which Mr. Candish had for the re-decoration of the Church of the Nativity, and her husband retorted with an open sneer.
"Oh, don't talk about Mr. Candish to me," he said. "He is that obsolete thing, a clergyman."
"I supposed," Edith responded good-naturedly, "that a question of artistic decoration would interest you, even if it was connected with a church."
"I hate anything connected with a religion," Fenton observed savagely. "A religion is simply an artificial scheme of life, to be followed at the expense of all harmony with nature."
It was evident to Edith that her husband was nervous and irritable, and with wifely protective instinct she attributed his condition to overwork. She did not take up the challenge which he in a manner flung down. She seldom argued with him now; she cast about in her mind for a safe topic of conversation, and, by ill-luck, hit upon the one least calculated to restore Arthur to good humor and a sane temper.
"Helen was in last evening," she said. "She is troubled about Ninitta; but I think it is because she isn't used to her ways."
Fenton started guiltily.
"What about Ninitta?" he demanded.
"Helen says she acts strangely, as if she had something on her mind; and that she complains bitterly that her husband doesn't care for her."