With all their idling they had days when they worked intensely, and Ludlow was as severe with Cornelia's work as he was with his own. He made her rub out and paint out, and he drew ruthless modifications of her work all over it, like the crudest of the Synthesis masters. He made her paint out every day the work of the day before, as they did in the Synthesis; though sometimes he paused over it in a sort of puzzle. Once he said, holding her sketch into the light he wanted, at the close of the afternoon, "If I didn't know you had done that to-day, I should say it was the one you had done yesterday." Toward the end of the month he recurred to this notion again. "Suppose," he said, "we keep this, and you do another to-morrow." The next day he said, in the same perplexity, "Well, keep this, and do another." After a week he took all her canvases, and set them one back of another, but so that he could see each in nearly the same light. He stood looking at them silently, with the two girls behind him, one at either shoulder. "It's as lovely as standing between two mirrors," Charmian suggested dreamily. "Pretty much of a sameness," Cornelia remarked. "Mm," Ludlow made in his throat. He glanced over the shoulder next her, and asked, as if Charmian were not there, "What makes you do her always alike?" "Because she _is_ always alike." "Then I've seen her wrong," said Ludlow, and he stared at Charmian as if she were a lay-figure. She bore his scrutiny as impassively as a lay-figure could. He turned again to Cornelia's sketches, and said gloomily, "I should like to have Wetmore see these." "Oh!" said Cornelia. Charmian came to life with another "Oh!" and then she demanded. "When? We must have something besides tea for Mr. Wetmore." "I think I'll ask him to step round in the morning," said Ludlow, with authority. Charmian said "Oh!" again, but submitted with the eagerness of a disciple; all phases of the art-life were equally precious, and even a snub from such a master must be willingly accepted. He went away and would not have any tea; he had an air of trouble--almost of offence. "Isn't he grand, gloomy and peculiar?" Charmian said. "I wonder what's the matter?" She turned to Ludlow's picture which he had left standing on the chair where he painted at it in disdain of an easel, and silently compared it with Cornelia's sketches. Then she looked at Cornelia and gave a dramatic start. "What is the matter?" asked Cornelia. She came up and began to look at the picture, too. Charmian demanded, "Don't you see?" "No, I don't see anything," said Cornelia, but as she looked something became apparent which she could not deny. She blushed violently and turned upon Charmian. "You ought to be ashamed," she began, and she tried to take hold of her; she did not know why.