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With eyes downcast she seemed for a moment to be seeking a phrase in which properly to express some thought which troubled her. Then she looked up quickly. "I don't know that I ought to say it," she remarked, "but I can't help feeling that Ninitta is not so fond of her husband as she used to be.
"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love." "I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures."
Least of all, in asking the Italian to pose, had Fenton been actuated by any intention of tempting her to evil. He needed a model for the Fatima as he needed his canvas and brushes; and his satisfaction at having induced Ninitta to serve his purpose was in kind much the same as his pleasure that his brushes and canvas were exactly what he wanted.
"Ah!" he cried hotly to himself. "And she? How can I give up the hope of winning her? What was a boy's foolish fancy to the passion of a man and for such a woman! She is half goddess. No, no; I cannot do it. I cannot marry this Italian peasant, this model that has who knows what history! I will not; I owe something to myself, to my art. What is the simple happiness of Ninitta to my art?
He was trying to decide whether he should worm a secret out of Hubbard to throw as a sop to that vile cursed cad, Irons, to keep his foul mouth shut about Ninitta. Heavens! What a tangle he had got into simply because he wanted a decent model for his picture! The abominable prudery and hypocrisy of the time lay behind the whole matter. But this would never do.
As he came through the saloon he had seen a man, a dim shape in the fog, clambering through the shattered staterooms to climb over the broken bowsprit into the vessel that had run them down. Hastily drawing Ninitta along, he forced his way back into the saloon. The body of the man who had been hurt in the collision lay dead and deserted on the floor.
As often it had happened before, Helen found herself so deeply moved by the fervor and the genuineness of Edith's faith, that she felt it impossible to go on with an argument which could convince only at the expense of weakening this rare trust. She brought the conversation back to its starting point. "But about Ninitta," she said.
He could not but know how poignant to Ninitta must be the grief of giving him up, although he assured himself that in the long years of separation she must have become accustomed to live without him, and that her grief would be rather fancied than real. Yet he was too tender-hearted to be wholly at ease after all his reasoning.
He debated with himself, too, how much he owed to the girl who gave her life up so unreservedly to him. His old love "call it rather mere boyish passion," he-thought scornfully was long since dead beyond hope; yet the devotion which it had awakened in Ninitta burned on as steadily as ever.
"Yet I meant to marry you," he said, half to himself, although still addressing her. "I came to-night to say, 'Come, Ninitta, let us take up the broken romance that a cruel mistake interrupted there in Rome. I had long ago outgrown my old fancy, but I meant to be true to my promise to you. I meant to give up even my ambition for your sake; to make your life happy and secure.
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