THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED.
Merchant of Venice; iii.—2.

It was a dainty little table to which Helen invited her husband when every thing was ready. The china was of odd bits picked up here and there abroad, and it was now disposed with an artist's eye for color and grouping. A tall bottle of Rhine wine had come from some mysterious nook, and beside it were a pair of fine old German glasses, frail as bubbles.

"I have always to offer my guests Rhine wine," Helen said, "for I've no glasses for any thing else. Arthur is ungracious enough to object. He does not like white wine as you do."

"I do like it," her guest answered, drawing the cork, "and so does Arthur, only he does not know it. He has somewhere stumbled upon the whim of pretending not to, and he can deceive himself more completely than any other man I ever saw. Rhine wine is the most poetic of beverages. It should go down like oil and only leave a fragrance like a poet's dream behind it."

"That is quite a rhapsody for you, Will; only your cool tone gives it a certain cynical flavor."

"I mean all I say, I assure you. Champagne is vulgar. It is the drink of self-made snobs and cads who wish to pass for men of the world; but Rhine wine is the drink for poets and artists."

"I am delighted to hear you defend it; it is very good of you, when I happen to know you are not fond of it. It is a graceful return for my inhospitality in not giving you your favorite Burgundy, but I haven't a drop."

"Oh, don't mind the wine! I came to see you," Dr. Ashton said, with his delightful smile. "How droll it was to see Arthur to-day. Do you think he has really persuaded himself he is in love with his wife?"

"Arthur has great adaptability," Helen returned. "I think he believes he is in love. I'm sure I hope you'll not feel it your duty to tell him he isn't."

"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 attitude, 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-glass 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 fashion 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 circumstances. 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 glass 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 friendship. 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 friendship 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 circumstances, 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.
Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.—2.

When Grant Herman attempted to speak with Mrs. Greyson at the Fenton's reception, he had more in view than simply the desire of being near the woman he loved. He was full of trouble and bewilderment, and instinctively turned toward her for aid and sympathy.

The scene between himself and Helen, to which the latter had alluded in her conversation with Dr. Ashton, was of far deeper import than her words might have seemed to imply. In the first shock of discovering that her work was broken she had been so overcome, that although she struggled bravely to conceal her feelings, she had excited the sculptor's keenest pity; and it not unnaturally followed that in attempting to express his sympathy he found himself telling his love before he was aware. He had determined to be silent upon this subject. Uncertain what were Helen's feelings towards him and restrained by a sense of loyalty to the bond which united him to Ninitta, he had resolved to bury his love in his own breast, at least until time gave him opportunity of honorably declaring it. Now circumstances betrayed him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her. It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the woman he loved, and he blindly felt that Ninitta had struck at himself through his most sensitive feelings. He renounced all the fealty to which he had been held by a sense of honor, and he now poured out to Helen the full tide of his passionate love.

The sculptor was not a man to be lightly moved, but it is these calm, grave natures that once aroused are most irresistible. His passionate outburst took Helen unaware; she scarcely knew what she did, and she became suddenly aware of a truth so overwhelming that every thing else faded into insignificance beside it.

"I love you!" he cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, that she too loved him.

It seemed to her that some power above her own volition ruled her, as in moments of high excitement the body sometimes appears to declare its independence of the will, and to act wholly by its own decisions. She was aware that she raised her eyes to his, although she would have given much to avoid his glance; and she knew that it was from what he read there that he took courage to fold her in his embrace.

Yet with his arms about her and his piercing kisses upon her face, Helen felt as if sinking helplessly into a mighty ocean; as if all struggles must be unavailing, and she could only yield to the resistless love which engulfed her.

From this first feeling of powerlessness, however, her strong nature sprang with a sharp recoil. She was too noble to surrender without a struggle. She would not even think whether she loved this man; that might be considered upon some safe vantage ground; now all energy must be concentrated upon escaping from the deadly peril in which she found herself.

Helen had freed herself as far as she was able from the marriage bond which had so galled her, and she was glad to forget that such a tie had ever existed, but she yet remembered that she was still a wife, and the kiss of a man not her husband overwhelmed her with shuddering humiliation and fear. She struggled from her lover's embrace with such an expression of terror upon her face, that he started back amazed and grieved.

He began to stammer confused words of contrition, of sorrow, of love, and of supplication.

"How could you!" she gasped. "Oh, leave me!"

There came into her excited mind a way of escape, upon which, even though it brought with it a sense of baseness, she seized in despair.

"Ninitta," she said. "Ninitta!"

He gave her a look of pain which went to her very heart. He did not move or answer, but his whole soul seemed to look through his dark eyes in pitiful appeal.

"Go," she continued, but in a hurried voice which betrayed her agitation. "Leave me now. Oh, I cannot bear it!"

And crushed with pain and shame, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

Herman made a step towards her, but instantly she recovered herself, looking up with swimming eyes and lips that quivered despite her utmost effort.

"No," she said, "do not touch me. You must go. I cannot bear another word. Forgive me," she went on rapidly, as he hesitated, still with those appealing eyes fixed upon her. "Oh, forgive me, but go."

He turned slowly and moved towards the door. The broken bas-relief, with its beautiful mutilated figure caught his eye, and seemed again to remind him that he had at last a right to speak to Helen, unhampered by the thought of Ninitta. He looked back as if he would even now disobey her and plead his love anew. But her eyes refused his prayer before it could be uttered. He lingered still an instant.

"I cannot go," he broke out suddenly. "I love you! I must stay! I must at least have an answer. Do you think a man could kiss you once and then leave you like this?"

She shivered as if she felt anew his passionate embrace and shrank from it. She threw her glance about as to discover some means of escape. The gesture, the look, overwhelmed him with sudden remorse. He trusted himself not for a single backward look now, but rushed out of the studio, leaving her sitting there like the princess of the fairy tale who overcame the genii only by recourse to immortal fire which consumed her also.

Alone in his studio the sculptor strode up and down, struggling with the emotion which mastered him. He debated with himself whether Helen loved him or not; yet the more carefully he recalled his interview with her, the more impossible he found it to determine. But hope plucked courage out of this very uncertainty, and clung to the belief that had not Helen in her heart some affection for him, she could not have been so touched.

But what of Ninitta? He threw back his head and walked down the studio, his steps sounding sharply upon the hard cement floor. What of Ninitta? He had absurdly dallied with his supposed obligations to her long enough. Now, at least, after this outrage, he repeated to himself, he was free. He was at liberty now—if indeed he had not always been—to consider what he owed to himself; what to the woman he loved.

He recalled the hot words he had spoken to the model earlier in the afternoon when the anger of discovery was fresh upon him, and he felt a pang of self-reproach. 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 at last started out to find Ninitta, perhaps to comfort her, perhaps to cast her off forever. At least to come to some definite conclusion of their doubtful relations.

But Ninitta was not to be found. She was not in her attic; nor did she return that night, nor the next day, nor yet the following; and it was to tell of the model's disappearance, and to ask aid in tracing her, that Herman had wished to speak to Helen at the Fenton's reception.