To his sculptor's eye, form was the important thing, and
the fact that he recognized the model bore down all else. He remembered
how marked had been Ninitta's unwillingness to accompany him to the
exhibition, and the possible connection between this and the picture
forced itself upon his mind.
With all the instinctive generosity of his soul, however, Herman strove
to believe that the _Fatima_ had been painted, as Fenton said, from old
studies, and that his wife had not been guilty of the painful indecorum
of posing. He compelled himself to answer the artist calmly, although
he could not make his manner cordial. And as he spoke, his eye,
searching the picture for confirmation of his hope or of his fear,
recognized among the draperies a Turkish shawl he had himself given his
wife after their marriage.
He made his way out of the gallery and out of the club house. He felt
that he must get away from the innumerable eyes by which he was
surrounded. He started toward home, but before he had gone a block, he
stopped, hesitated a moment, and struck off into a side street. He was
not ready to go home. He had said to himself too often, reiterating it
in his mind constantly for six years, that in dealing with his wife his
must be the wisdom, the patience, and the forbearance of both. He
remembered a night long ago, when he had gone to Ninitta's room, in a
mood of contrition, to renew the troth of his youth, and had fallen
instead into a fit of bitter anger.
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