"He is coming to see you to-morrow, Mrs. Hubbard said. The picture is to be her birthday present. I told her you were so busy I didn't know when you could begin." "I would stretch a point to please Mr. Hubbard. I am almost done with Irons, vulgar old cad. I wish I dared paint him as bad as he really looks." "But your artistic conscience won't let you?" she queried, smiling. "He is a dreadful old creature; but he means well." "People who mean well are always worse than those who don't mean anything; but I can make it up with Hubbard. He looks like Rubens' St. Simeon. I wish he wore the same sort of clothes." "You might persuade him to, for the picture. But my second piece of news is almost as good. Helen is coming home." "Helen Greyson?" "Helen Greyson. I had a letter from her today, written in Paris. She had already got so far, and she ought to be here very soon." "How long has she been in Rome?" Fenton asked. He had suddenly become graver. He had been intimate with Mrs. Greyson, a sculptor of no mean talent, in the days when he had been a fervid opponent of people and of principles with whom he had later joined alliance, and the idea of her return brought up vividly his parting from her, when she had scornfully upbraided him for his apostasy from convictions which he had again and again declared to be dearer to him than life. "It is six years," Mrs. Fenton answered. "Caldwell was born the March after she went, and he will be six in three weeks. Time goes fast. We are getting to be old people." Fenton stared at his plate absently, his thoughts busy with the past. "Has Grant Herman been married six years?" he asked, after a moment. "Grant Herman? Yes; he was married just before she sailed; but what of it?" Fenton laid down the fork with which he had been poking the bits of fish about on his plate. He folded his arms on the edge of the table, and regarded his wife. "It is astonishing, Edith," he observed, "how well one may know a woman and yet be mistaken in her. For six years I have supposed you to be religiously avoiding any allusion to Helen's love for Grant Herman, and it seems you never knew it at all." It was Mrs. Fenton's turn to look up in surprise. "What do you mean?" she asked. Her husband laughed lightly, yet not very joyously. "Nothing, if you will. Nobody ever told me they were in love with each other, but I am as sure that Helen made Herman marry Ninitta as if I had been on hand to see the operation." "Made him marry her? Why should he marry her if he didn't want to?" "Oh, well, I don't know anything about it. I know Ninitta followed Herman to America, for she told me so; and I am sure he had no idea of marrying her when she got here. Anybody can put two and two together, I suppose, especially if you know what infernally Puritanical notions Helen had." "Puritanical?" The artist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his wife in his superior and tantalizing fashion.