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. He had talked to her of the
picture he was painting for a national competitive exhibition, it is
true, and dwelt upon the difficulty of procuring a proper model; he had
met her on the street one day and taken her into his studio to see it;
he had regretted that it was impossible to ask her; and of a hundred
apparently blameless and trivial things, the result was that this
morning, while Helen and Herman were walking across the Common to find
her, Ninitta was lying amid a heap of gorgeous stuffs and cushions in
Fenton's studio, while he painted and talked after his fashion.

It is as impossible to trace the beginnings of any chain of events as
it is to find the mystery of the growth of a seed. Whatever Arthur
Fenton's faults, he certainly believed himself to be one who could not
betray a friend. The ideal which he vaguely called honor, and which
served him as that ultimate ethical standard which in one shape or
another is necessary to every human being, forbade his taking advantage
of any one whose friendship he admitted. His instinct of self-
indulgence had, however, made him so expert a casuist that he was able