In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no present intention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address.  As a matter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr. Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it of the painter for himself.  He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting on; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility of women generally going in for art.  “Even when they have talent they’ve got too much against them.  Where a girl doesn’t seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help.”

His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do.

“No, Dolly,” he persisted; “she’d better be home milking the cows and leading the horse to water.”

Do you think she’d better be up till two in the morning at balls and going all day to receptions and luncheons?”

“Oh, guess it isn’t a question of that, even if she weren’t drawing.  You knew them at home,” he said to Beaton.

“Yes.”

“I remember.  Her mother said you suggested me.  Well, the girl has some notion of it; there’s no doubt about that.  But—­she’s a woman.  The trouble with these talented girls is that they’re all woman.  If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be much chance for the men, Beaton.  But we’ve got Providence on our own side from the start.  I’m able to watch all their inspirations with perfect composure.  I know just how soon it’s going to end in nervous breakdown.  Somebody ought to marry them all and put them out of their misery.”

“And what will you do with your students who are married already?” his wife said.  She felt that she had let him go on long enough.

“Oh, they ought to get divorced.”

“You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that’s what you think of them.”

“My dear, I have a wife to support.”

Beaton intervened with a question.  “Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn’t standing it very well?”

“How do I know?  She isn’t the kind that bends; she’s the kind that breaks.”

After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, “Won’t you come home with us, Mr. Beaton?”

“Thank you; no.  I have an engagement.”

“I don’t see why that should prevent you,” said Wetmore.  “But you always were a punctilious cuss.  Well!”

Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in, and he yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, of inclination, in going to call at the Leightons’.  He asked for the ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs. Leighton and Miss Woodburn.