"How often am I to to tell you that a copy must be exact," he stammered in his disjointed staccato speech. "If you quote a line of poetry do you alter one of the words? If I trust you to reproduce a picture surely you know you are not at liberty to change it." She was as pale as he was. She looked dully at him, and then at her own canvas on the easel. "I forgot," she said, in a suffocated voice. I looked at the original and the copy, and even my stolid heart beat a little quicker. The original represented a young girl--his wife had evidently sat for him--playing on a harp, while a man listened, leaning against a table, with a bowl of chrysanthemums upon it. The copy was much larger than the original, and its wooden smugness was faithfully reproduced. The faulty drawing of the two figures seemed to have been accentuated by doubling its size. It was an amazingly exact reproduction, except in one particular. In Blanche's copy she had made the shadow of the chrysanthemums fall upon the wall. It was a wonderful, a mysterious shadow, _I had seen it before_. "I hadn't indicated the slightest shadow," Arthur continued. "There is no sunshine in the room. You have deliberately falsified my composition." "I did it without thinking," said Blanche shivering. "It is a mistake." "A mistake," he said sullenly. "Your heart isn't in your work, that is the truth. You don't really care to help me to find my true expression." And he took the canvas from the easel and tore it in two. Did he half know, did some voice in the back of his twisted brain cry out to him that his part of the picture was hopelessly mediocre and out of drawing, that the only value it possessed was the shadow of the chrysanthemums? Was there jealousy in his rage? Who shall say! I butted in at this point, and made a pretext for sending Blanche out of the room. "Now, my dear fellow," I said confidentially, "don't in future try to associate your wife with your art. It is quite beyond her. Women, sir, have no artistic feeling. The home, dress, amusement that is their department. 'Occupy till I come,' might well have been said of feminine talent. It does occupy--till--ahem! _we_ arrive. When a woman is happily married like your wife she doesn't care a fig for anything else. Let her share your lighter moments, your walks and drives, allow her to solace your leisure. The bow, sir, must not be always at full stretch. But promise me you won't allow her to copy any more of your pictures." "Never again," said Arthur sepulchrally, stretched face downwards on the satin sofa. I picked up the two pieces of torn canvas. A sudden idea seized me. "And now," I said, "I shall say a few words of reprimand to Mrs. Robinson. You need not fear that I shall be too severe with her." Arthur made no movement, and I left him, and after taking the torn picture to my car I climbed to the top of the house where I suspected I should find Blanche.