nine o'clock
He had gone to his studio on Sunday afternoon and sketched in a head of Ninitta , and upon this he worked , now and then , with a desperate energy born of the feeling that it substantiated his story to Edith . He had been seized with grave doubts as to the advisability of exhibiting the _ Fatima _ just now ; but he did not see his way clear to spare so large and important a picture from the collection , and he comforted himself with the thought that the face was different , and that if the model were recognized he would be supposed to have worked up old sketches taken when Ninitta had posed for him before her marriage . He worked with all his marvellous energy , collecting pictures , directing their hanging , soothing artists whose canvases were not placed to their liking , making out the catalogue , and arranging all the details which in such a connection are fatiguing and well-nigh innumerable . The exhibition was opened on Wednesday evening with a reception to ladies , and by nine o'clock the gallery began to fill . Fenton had decorated the rooms a little , chiefly with live pampas grass and palms and India-rubber trees . It is difficult to see how mankind in the nineteenth century could exist without the India-rubber tree . If that plant were destroyed , civilization would be left gasping , helpless and crippled ; and of late years , not content with making it serviceable in every department of practical life , men have brought the shrub into the domain of aesthetics by using it for decorative purposes .