Fortunately for the young artist, the four pictures which he had painted gave excellent satisfaction. In fact, they were his best works. The mind, when smarting under pain, often acts with a higher vigor, while the perceptions acquire a new intensity; and this was the real secret of his better success. The pictures pleased so well that they brought him other sitters, and he was able, some time before Clara’s instalment of interest was exhausted, to place more money in her hands. The fact of doing this was always a relief to his mind. It was a kind of tacit declaration of independence. From that time both his work and his ability increased, and he was able to make enough to meet, with the aid of his wife’s income, the various expenses to which he was subjected, and to pay off the few obligations that were held against him. But he was not happy. No man can be who forfeits, by any act that affects the whole of his after life, his self-respect; and this Ellison had done. In spite of his better judgment, he would permit himself to see in Clara’s words, looks and conduct, a rebuke of the mercenary spirit that first led him to seek her favor. Nothing of this was in her heart. But guilt makes the mind suspicious. CHAPTER V. The young artist worked on with untiring assiduity—he was toiling for independence. Never, since his marriage, had he breathed the air with the freedom of former times. The reaction of his often strange manner—his days of reserve—had been felt by his wife, and the effect upon her was plainly to be seen. With a perverseness of judgment, hardly surprising under the circumstances, he attributed the change in Clara to her suspicions as to the purity of his motives in seeking an alliance. In the meantime, he had become more intimately acquainted with her relatives, none of whom he liked very well. Her oldest brother interfered a good deal in the suit which he was engaged in defending on behalf of his wife; and by much that he said, left the impression that he did not think Ellison’s judgment sound enough in business matters to advise a proper course of action.