I echoed Dicky’s words in blank astonishment.  His bit of news was so unexpected, amazement was the only feeling that came to me for a moment or two.

“Well, what’s the reason for the awful astonishment?” demanded Dicky, truculently.  “You look as if a bomb had exploded in your vicinity.”

He expressed my feeling exactly.  I knew that Miss Draper had become a fixture in his studio, acting as his secretary as well as his model, and pursuing her art studies under his direction.  But his references to her were always so casual and indifferent that for months I had not thought of her at all.  And now I found that Dicky had progressed to such a degree of intimacy with her that he not only wished to move to the village which she called home, but had allowed her to select the house in which we were to live.

I might be foolish, overwrought, but all at once I recognized in Dicky’s beautiful protege a distinct menace to my marital happiness.  I knew I ought to be most guarded in my reply to my husband, but I am afraid the words of my answer were tipped with the venom of my feeling toward the girl.

“I admit I am astonished,” I replied coldly.  “You see, I did not know it was the custom in your circle for an artist’s model to select a house for his wife and mother.  You must give me time to adjust myself to such a bizarre state of things.”

I was so furious myself that I did not realize how much my answer would irritate Dicky.  He sprang to his feet with an oath and turned on me the old, black angry look that I had not seen for months.

“That’s about the meanest slur I ever heard,” he shouted.  “Just because a girl works as a model every other woman thinks she has the right to cast a stone at her, and put on a how-dare-you-brush-your-skirt-against-mine sort of thing.  You worked for a living yourself not so very long ago.  I should think you would have a little Christian charity in your heart for any other girl who worked.”

“It strikes me that there is a slight difference between the work of a high school instructor in history, a specialist in her subject, and the work of an artist’s model,” I returned icily.  “But, laying all that aside, I should have considered myself guilty of a very grave breach of good taste if I had ventured to select a house for the wife of my principal, unasked and unknown to her.”

“Cut out the heroics, and come down to brass tacks,” Dicky snarled vulgarly.  “Why don’t you be honest and say you’re jealous of the poor girl?  I’ll bet, if the truth were known, it isn’t only the house she selected you’d balk at.  I’ll bet you wouldn’t want to go to Marvin at all for the summer, regardless that I’ve spent many a comfortable week in that section, and like it better than any other summer place I know.”

Through all my anger at Dicky, my disgust at his coarseness, came the conviction that he had spoken the truth.  I was jealous of Grace Draper, there was no use denying the fact to myself, however strenuously I might try to hide the thing from Dicky.  I told myself that I hated Marvin because it held this girl, that instead of spending the summer there I wished I might never see the place again.