"I have been thinking," he began, "a little about the psychology of all this. You'll think I'm developing a wonderful interest in art, but you see I'm laid up and can't do my own work, so I'm entitled to some thoughts about art. Now these things you paint grow out of a mental image—don't they, dear? The things you paint the mind sees first, so that the mental image is the true one, and then you—approximate. I should think then that it might help you to tell about pictures. For instance, if in painting a picture you had to tell about it to some one who did not look at it, wouldn't that make your own mental image more clear, and so help make it more real to you?'
"Why, Karl, I never thought of it, but,"—meditatively—"yes, I believe it would."
He turned away that she might not see the gladness in his face. "And it would be interesting—wouldn't it—to see just how good a conception you could give of the picture through words?"
"Yes," she said, interested now—"it would be a way of feeling one's own grip on it."
"Of course," he continued, "that couldn't be done except in a case, like yours and mine, where people were close together."
"Yes," she assented, "and that in itself would show that they were close together."
At that he laid a quick hand upon her hair, caressing it.
"Oh, after all, dear,"—gathering up the last of the sketches—"the greatest thing in the world is to do one's work—isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, and his voice was low and tired, "unless the greatest thing in the world is to submit to the inevitable."
She looked up quickly. "That doesn't sound like you."