The Philistines | Page 3

glanced up and saw that his sitter's face was quickly, in the
silence, falling into a heavy repose, "that frankness begets frankness.
My sitters are always telling me things which I do not want to know,
just because I am so beastly outspoken and sympathetic."
"You must have an excellent chance to get pointers," responded the
sitter, his pale eyes kindling with animation. "You've painted two or
three men this winter that could have put you up to a good thing."
"That isn't the sort of line chat takes in a studio," Fenton returned, with
a slight shrug. "It isn't business that men talk in a studio. That would be
too incongruous."
Irons sneered and laughed, with an air of consequence and superiority.
"I don't suppose many of you artist fellows would make much of a fist
at business," he observed.
"Modern business," laughed the other, amused by his own epigram, "is
chiefly the art of transposing one's debts. The thing to learn is how to
pass the burden of your obligations from one man's shoulders to those
of another often enough so that nobody who has them gets tired out,
and drops them with a crash."
His sitter grinned appreciatively.
"And they don't tell you how to do this?"
"Oh, no. The things my sitters tell me about are of a very different sort.
They make to me confidences they want to get rid of; things you'd
rather not hear. Heavens! I have all I can do to keep some men from
treating me like a priest and confessing all their sins to me."
Mr. Irons regarded the artist closely, with a curious narrowing of the
eyes.
"That must give you a hold over a good many of them," he said. "I shall
be careful what I say."
Fenton laughed, with a delightful sense of superiority. It amused him
that his sitter should be betraying his nature at the very moment when
he fancied himself particularly on his guard.
"You certainly have no crimes on your conscience that interfere with
your digestion," was his reply; "but in any case, you may make yourself
easy; I am not a blackmailer by profession."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," Mr. Irons answered, easily; "only of course
you are a man who has his living to make. Every painter has to depend
on his wits, and when you come in contact with men of another class
professionally it would be natural enough to suppose you would take
advantage of it."
The "lady's finger" in Fenton's cheek stood out white amid the sudden
red, and his eyes flashed.
"Of course a sitter," he said in an even voice, which had somehow lost
all its smooth sweetness, "is in a manner my guest, and the fact that his
class was not up to mine, or that he wasn't a gentleman even, wouldn't
excuse my taking advantage of him."
The other flushed in his turn. He felt the keenness of the retort, but he
was not dexterous enough to parry it, and he took refuge in coarse
bullying.
"Come, now, Fenton," he cried with a short, explosive laugh, "you talk
like a gentleman."
But the artist, knowing himself to have the better of the other, and not
unmindful, moreover, of the fact that to offend Alfred Irons might
mean a serious loss to his own pocket, declined to take offence.
"Of course," he answered lightly, and with the air of one who
appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have
comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in
being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any longer
to-day. Come here and see how you think we are getting on."
And the sitter forgot quickly that he had been on the very verge of a
quarrel.

II
SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE. Measure for Measure; v.--I.
When dinner was announced that night, Mrs. Arthur Fenton had not
appeared, but presently she came into the room with that guilty and
anxious look which marks the consciousness of social misdemeanors.
She was dressed in a gown of warm primrose plush, softened by
draperies of silver-gray net. It was a costume which her husband had
designed for her, and which set off beautifully her brown hair and
creamy white skin.
"I hope I have not kept you waiting long," she said, "but I wanted to

dress for Mrs. Frostwinch's before dinner, and I was late about getting
home."
There was a certain wistfulness in her manner which betrayed her
anxiety lest he should be vexed at the trifling delay. Arthur Fenton was
too well bred to be often openly unkind to anybody, but none the less
was his wife afraid of his displeasure. He was one of those