The boy was with his nurse or at the kindergarten for long
hours during which Ninitta, who had few of the resources with which an
educated woman would have filled her time, mingled longings for her old
life with blissful gloatings over Nino's beauty and cleverness. Her
husband was always kind, but since his marriage delicacy of sentiment
had made him shrink from having his wife pose even for himself, while
naturally no thought of her doing so for another would have been
entertained for a moment.
Ninitta had been so long in the life, to pose had been so large a part
of her very existence, that she hardly knew how to do without the old-
time flavor. Mrs. Fenton had perceived something of this without at all
appreciating the strength of the feeling of the sculptor's wife, and
she had at one time tried to interest Ninitta in what might perhaps be
called missionary work among the models of Boston, a class of whose
calling Edith held views which her husband was not wholly wrong in
calling absurdly narrow. She was met at once by the difficulty that it
was impossible to make Ninitta see that missionary work was needed
among the models, and the effort resulted in nothing except to convince
Mrs. Fenton that she could do little with the Italian.
Just how Arthur Fenton had persuaded her to pose without her husband's
knowledge, Ninitta could not have told; and the artist himself would
have assured any investigator, even that speculative spirit which held
the place left vacant by the dismissal of his conscience, that he had
never deliberately tried to entice her.
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