"Do you feel in the mood? Have you any ambition for honest, painstaking effort—for hard work, John, to attempt this under a first-class artist?" Helen persisted.
The man began to grow restive; he could never bear to be pinned down to committing himself to anything, or to yield a point.
"You have no idea, Helen, what a grind it is to sit before an easel day after day, and wield a brush," he said, in an injured tone, and with a frown of annoyance.
"Everything is a grind unless you put your heart into your work—unless one is governed by principle and a sense of moral responsibility," said Helen gravely.
"Is that the way you have baked and brewed, washed dishes and made beds the past year?" queried her husband, with a covert sneer.
"I certainly never baked and brewed, or washed dishes, solely from love of the work," she quietly but significantly replied, as her glance rested upon her wrist, where a faint scar was visible—the fading reminder of a serious burn sustained when she first began her unaccustomed duties as cook and maid of all work.
John observed it also, then quickly looked away, as he remembered that she had never murmured or neglected a single duty on account of it.
"But where is the money for a teacher coming from?" he inquired, after a moment, and referring to Helen's unanswered question regarding his unfinished work.
"You know Dorothy's money has been accumulating all these years," she began in reply. "The interest now amounts to upward of fifteen hundred dollars, and I will consent to use it for this purpose, if you will agree to do your level best to make your unfinished pictures marketable during the coming year."
Her husband flushed hotly—not because he experienced either gratitude or a sense of shame in view of becoming dependent upon his wife's bounty, but because it angered him to have conditions made for him.