The Pagans Part 17

"I'm not Mephistopheles," answered Dr. Ashton, smiling, and watching appreciatively as she made the salad.

Mrs. Greyson had dressed carefully for the reception from which she had just come, and her cream-colored cashmere, with soft old thread lace, and a bunch of amber-hued roses at the throat, became her as only a dress chosen by an artist could. It fell away from her exquisite arms, and from among the lace rose her beautiful neck, the stuff of her gown setting off the lovely texture of her skin to perfection.

"I must not ruin my best attire," she said lightly, gathering it up.

"Now Ninitta has spoiled my bas-relief, it may be long before I get more. I owe you a good deal, Will, for letting me study modeling in Paris."

"It was pure selfishness," he returned good-humoredly. "I wanted to keep you busy so that I might go my own way. But what about your bas-relief? Who spoiled it? Who is Ninitta, and what has she against you?"

"That is what I wanted to tell you."

She did not speak again for a moment, seemingly intent upon the exact measurement of the ingredients of her salad. In reality she was considering how best to present what she had to say. She mentally ran over the points she wished to make, becoming thereby conscious that she had herself come to no definite conclusions upon the topic she was about to discuss. She looked furtively at her husband, noting his att.i.tude, his expression, and whatever her past experience enabled her to construe into indications of his mood. As well and as long as she had known this man, she was still ignorant of the key to his nature--that feeling or motive which, touched in an ultimate appeal, would always insure a response. Conscience is the fruit of the tree of experience, and, taken in this sense, every man must be possessed of a conscience, which by its inner voice re-enforces any pleading which coincides with its dictates. What was the nature of her husband's inward monitor Helen had never been able to discover and at this moment she realized keenly her ignorance.

"Will," she said earnestly, laying down her salad-fork and spoon, "I think it is wrong for us to live as we do."

He shrugged his shoulders, looking at her curiously.

"I cannot flatter myself that you care to return to the old uncomfortableness."

She flushed warmly, with a keen pang of mingled pain and indignation.

"No," she replied. "No; never that. It is not for ourselves, but for others."

"Others! Fenton?"

She flushed more deeply still.

"I have told you already that you are mistaken about my regard for Arthur. It was not he I meant."

She served her guest, and sat playing nervously with her fork as he ate and praised the salad.

"Mr. Herman sent for me the other afternoon," she began again, forcing herself to speak calmly. "My model Ninitta is very fond of him, and chose to be jealous of his praise of my work. It might have all gone over without an outburst, I suppose, if she had not had her attention called to the fact that I had modeled his head for December. Why she had never happened to notice it I don't know; she was in the studio constantly."

"Not when he was there?" queried Dr. Ashton, holding up his graceful, antique wine-gla.s.s and admiring it.

"No, not when he was there," repeated his wife. "She had pounded off the head when he sent for me with a mallet she had picked up in his studio. I never saw him in such a rage. She was gone when I got there.

She didn't make any attempt to conceal it. She came stalking melodramatically into his studio with the mallet and laid it down.

'There,' said she, 'now kill me. I have broken her work.' It was like a fas.h.i.+on magazine story. He thought at first she had gone mad."

"So she had. Women are always insane when they are jealous. I wish I had Arthur's knack at epigram, and I'd make that sound original."

"He says he was very harsh," Helen continued, "though I fancy he could not be quite that in any circ.u.mstances. It was very hard," she added with a sigh. "It was like looking at a dead child to see my best work ruined. It was really a part of myself."

"But can't it be repaired? It was in the clay, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I fear for my exhausted enthusiasm. I can never do it as it was before. My poor, unlucky December."

She toyed with her gla.s.s absently, apparently for the moment forgetting her companion, who continued his supper with no less relish than before. He watched her keenly, however, fully aware that there was more to be told. He was a man too accustomed to follow any desire or indulge any whim not to notice appreciatively, as he had noticed many times before, how beautiful were the curves of his wife's arms and throat, and with what grace her head was poised. He had once defined a liberal man as one who could appreciate his own wife, and he would have been far more insensible than he was, if, with this beautiful woman before him he had not been, judged by his own standard, extremely liberal.

"And this has what to do with the question of our relations being known?" he asked.

She started from her reverie, the red again showing faintly in her cheek.

"It is hardly fair," she answered in a tone softer and lower than that in which she had been speaking, "to tell you all that Mr. Herman said.

He wishes to marry me."

"And you wish you were free to have it so?"

There was once more a pause. Helen busied herself in an elaborate arrangement of the torn lettuce leaves upon her plate, seemingly concentrating all her thoughts upon forming them into an intricate figure.

"Will," she said, suddenly, lifting her eyes and leaning towards him, "I do not know how to make you understand. I haven't succeeded so well in my attempts thus far in life as to be very sanguine of doing it now.

You do not know how ashamed and contemptible I felt for being party to the deception that made it possible for him to speak so to me. He was so honest, so earnest; he was so unconscious of the barriers between us. I felt that I had done him such an irreparable wrong by concealing the truth. He had a right to know that I am a married woman."

"Did you tell him?"

"No; but I must. I want to be free from the promise we made to each other."

"It all comes," returned her husband without any show of irritation, "from my telling Fenton."

"I cannot see what that has to do with it. I like the absence from questioning, the avoidance of gossip, as much as you can; but it makes me feel as if I were a living lie to have Mr. Herman bringing his honest love to me to be met only by deception. It is cruel and it is wrong."

"That depends entirely upon how you define wrong," retorted Dr. Ashton coolly. "I do not see why it is wrong for me to decline to sacrifice my convenience to Mr. Herman's sentiment. But without going into the question of metaphysics, let us look at the matter reasonably. Do you love Mr. Herman?"

Notwithstanding the studied nonchalance of his tone, a glance into his eyes might have shown Helen how much importance he attached to her answer. A woman is peculiarly dangerous when she is telling one man that another loves her. The masculine greed of possession is aroused by the mere thought of a possible rival, and Dr. Ashton was conscious at this moment of a kindling desire himself to win Helen's love, which he knew perfectly well had never been his.

"That is not at all relevant," was her reply, her eyes downcast. "The question of honesty is enough now. At least I respect Mr. Herman, and I must treat him squarely, as you would say. You have always told me to be 'a square fellow,' you know," she added, raising her glance with a faint smile.

"But if you tell him," said her husband, with a subtle tinge of impatience in his tone, "others must know. You can't go on letting one after another into the secret without its soon becoming public property."

"Why not then?" she responded. "I wonder we have been able to keep it so long. It is sure to be known now you have come home. I do not mean to proclaim it upon the housetops; but to let it work out if it will.

What harm can it do?"

"It will harm me. My life is not so secluded as yours is, Helen, It will make things confoundedly awkward. I shall have to go about giving endless explanations. Besides, here is Arthur's wife. I particularly don't want her to know."

"Why not? It is precisely that I was coming to. She seems to feel far more kindly to me than I should have supposed possible. I can't lie to her, Will. She has already asked me questions about my past life hard to answer. I want to tell her, so that we may have an honest basis for our friends.h.i.+p. I don't want to lose my hold on her."

"Nor on Arthur," acquiesced he gravely. "It is for that reason that I say you had better not tell her. I usually know what I am saying, do I not? I tell you it is for your own sake that I warn you to be quiet.

Arthur isn't going to be held in the leash very long by that piece of china-ware piety, and it is to you he will naturally turn for sympathy.

Don't spoil your chance of his friends.h.i.+p by breaking with her yet."

"Will," his wife said, with a glitter in her eyes he knew of old, "sometimes you talk like a very fiend incarnate."

"That," he replied rising, "is precisely what I am. There are a few rare, but fairly well authenticated cases on record, Helen, where a man under stress of circ.u.mstances, has been able to keep his own counsel; women without a confidant go mad. For your own sake you'd better trust me, now that Arthur isn't available; so I'll come and see you again. I am obliged to you for this jolly little supper. Your salads always were perfection. I'd like to stay and have you make me some coffee, but I have an engagement at twelve. Good-night."

XXI.

HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH.