His companion made no reply, and the approach of Rangely afforded Arthur a chance to change the conversation. "I say, Fred," he demanded, "have you congratulated Thayer Kent yet?" "Congratulated him?" echoed Rangely. "Yes. Didn't you know his engagement is out?" Rangely might have been said to take a page out of Fenton's own book, as he answered,-- "But what's the etiquette of precedence?" "Of precedence?" echoed Arthur, in his turn. "Yes," Rangely returned. "Which of us should congratulate the other first? Only," he added, hitting to his own delight upon a position which might save him from some awkwardness in the future, "of course my engagement can't be announced until Miss Merrivale gets home to her mother." "Well," Arthur said, "marriage is that ceremony by which man lays aside the pleasures of life and takes up its duties. I congratulate you on your determination to do anything so virtuous." "Sardonic, as usual," retorted Fred, laughing; and then he went to find Miss Merrivale, convinced that under the circumstances the sooner he proposed to her the better. XXXII HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY. Love's Labor's Lost; i.--1. All the world feels the pathos of helplessness hurt and wounded; but only some recognize how this applies to a great and noble nature attacked by unscrupulousness. In an encounter with dishonesty, nobility of soul may be, in its effect for the moment, utter weakness. Assailed by deceit or treachery the great heart has often no resource but endurance; and while endurance may save, it cannot defend. The moment Grant Herman's eyes fell upon the _Fatima_, he understood fully why Fenton had so volubly remarked that he had painted the picture from old studies. He tried to fight with his conviction that what the artist said was false, although even as he did so he could not crush down the feeling of having been wounded by the hand of a friend. It seemed to him incredible that Fenton, even though the painter's defection from the Pagans had caused something of a breach between them, could have been guilty of this outrage. He choked with an intolerable sense of shame for himself, for the artist, and for Ninitta. A terrible anguish wrung his heart as he looked across the crowded gallery gay with lights, with the rich dresses, with laughter, and with the beauty of women, to where hung the picture of the mother of his boy, an image of sensuous enticement. The fact that Fenton had substituted another face for that of Ninitta did not, for the moment, console him. To his sculptor's eye, form was the important thing, and the fact that he recognized the model bore down all else. He remembered how marked had been Ninitta's unwillingness to accompany him to the exhibition, and the possible connection between this and the picture forced itself upon his mind.