“Why, that’s good criticism,” he said, pleased. “Yes, that’s youth—when you don’t know how difficult the thing is. That’s why sometimes you succeed in doing it—Well, we’ll give it the place of honor. Wish the sun shone like that nowadays.”
“You haven’t taken off the signature,” she said, pointing to the lower corner. “Do you want to?”
“That’s queer! Thought I’d cleaned them all up,” he said, without appearing to notice the knowledge her remark implied.
He took a palette-knife and carefully shaved away the telltale strokes.
When they had hung the picture, he seemed to come out of his mental eclipse as though reinvigorated, and turned to her quite normally.
“Why, you must be tired!” he said, with a sudden contrition. “What a brute I am! Kept you up all night, too.”
She shook her head and smiled.
“I like this—I like changing something bare and empty into something beautiful and fine.”
“Now, just what do you mean by that?” he said, with an odd smile; but, seeing by her expression that she had meant nothing more than the words implied, he laughed to himself and added thoughtfully, with some personal show of interest, as he looked into her quiet eyes:
“Queer—that you should happen to be just over there!”