The artist kept on with his work in the life class at the Academy. Edgar sometimes tried to get him for a festivity at the studio, but, as he told his sister in disgust, one might as well try to get the Shah of Persia.
Every Sunday evening Phil spent at the Fabians' but never since he had returned to town had he made opportunity to resume a disturbing intimacy with Kathleen. Her book was having a fairly good sale, and the girl was at work upon another. Their lives lay apart mainly except on the Sunday evenings when Mr. Fabian, once again adjusted to his business life, claimed the guest far more than any of the others.
Edgar, finding that the propinquity of Phil and Violet during his absence in the summer had not produced any results, altered his expectations of trouble from that quarter. He made it a point to spend his Sunday evenings with the family, in order, as his mother said, to keep up the acquaintance; and on one of these evenings, toward spring, he brought Violet Manning to supper.
The busy young teacher's friendship with Kathleen had not progressed. The latter firmly believed that any romantic notions which such a girl might conceive for Edgar would bring her to grief in the end; and his present amazing popularity but augmented that conviction; so the girls had exchanged one call only during the season.
Violet responded to Mrs. Fabian's invitation for this Sunday and Edgar regarded her critically throughout the evening.
Never had he felt himself such authority on girls as now. They crowded his studio. Fashionable girls, wealthy girls, pretty girls, plain girls, clever ones, dull ones, aggressive, and shy girls; and he had frequently detected himself comparing the more interesting with Violet. Her spirit, her poise, her independence, her compact, graceful, healthy body, always stood the test.
As of old, to-night she seemed more interested in Phil than in himself. Her spontaneous joy over the news that during the past week he had sold a third picture, actually roused again Edgar's old train of thought. How did he know what had occurred during the summer, between the farmhouse and the Villa? Were these two only waiting, perhaps, until Phil began to find a sale for his pictures?
Poor little Violet was not intriguing. She found herself embarrassed in Edgar's family circle, and she was defending herself in the only way she knew. It seemed as if it must be legible on her face that she out-adored the adoration of all the singer's pupils; and it was a relief to her when she and the object were at last in a taxicab on the way home. The cover of the darkness, and the sober return to thoughts of to-morrow's duties, made her heave an inaudible sigh; but it is the unexpected that always happens.
Edgar's teeth were tightly closed and every street-lamp they passed showed him gazing at his companion.
"I wonder," he said at last,—"I wonder, Violet, why I've never been able to make you like me better. Other—other people like me."