How to act in the position in which he had been placed by Irons's
insulting proposal was a question which he found more difficult to
answer than according to his theories, it should have been. When a man
becomes his own highest law he is constantly exposed to the danger of
finding his theories of conduct utterly confounded by a change in self-
interest; and Fenton began to have a most painful sense of being
ethically wholly at sea. He had not yielded to temptation, however. He
had given Stewart Hubbard a couple of sittings, and so great had been
his fear lest he should inadvertently gather from his sitter some hint
of the knowledge he had been urged to obtain, that he had half
unconsciously been reserved and silent. The picture was going badly,
and the sitter wondered what had come over the witty and vivacious
artist.
Besides these vexations the artist had, moreover, other causes for
uneasiness at this time. His financial affairs were by no means in
satisfactory condition. He had been filling a good many orders and
getting excellent prices for his work, yet somehow he had been all the
year running behindhand. He lived beyond his means, priding himself
upon being the one Boston artist who had been born, bred, and educated
a gentleman, as he chose to put it to himself, and who was able to live
as a man of the world should.
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