"
While Edith chatted with her, the steward called Fenton away, in
connection with some question about the catalogues, and when Mrs.
Ranger moved on, Edith found herself for an instant alone. The mention
of her husband's name behind her caught her ear and her attention.
"Fenton's cheeky enough for anything!" said an unknown voice. "But he
makes a point of his good taste, and I think it's beastly poor form for
him to show that picture here."
"Bently says," returned another voice, also strange to Edith, "that
Fenton says she didn't pose for him, but that he worked it up from old
studies."
"I don't care if he did," was the response. "All the fellows know it,
and Herman must feel like the deuce."
"But you can't suppress every picture that has a study of her in it."
"Hush," said the other voice, "there comes Herman himself."
It seemed to Edith that this brief dialogue had been shouted out so
that it could not be inaudible to any one in the room. She looked about
for her husband. Her ears rang with the meaningless babble of voices,
the jargon of human sounds conveying far less impression of
intelligence than the noise of water on the shore, or the sound of the
wind in the tree-tops. All about her were faces wreathed in
conventional smiles, the inevitable laughter, the usual absence of
earnestness, and in the midst of all, with a shock hardly less painful
than that of the discovery she had just made, she heard the voice of
Herman bidding her good evening.
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