"I hope you are right. But it doesn't cheer me a bit to talk like that, Douglass. I am not deceiving myself. He is changed, oh, so greatly changed," she cried. "You--you don't mean to say his--his love--" began Converse. "There--there isn't any danger of--of _that_?" he substituted. "No, no! You don't understand me," she said, drearily. "He loves me as much as ever--I know he does. It isn't that. Douglass, we must get his mind off his work. He thinks of--of nothing else." She would have given anything for the courage to tell him what she had seen the day before. Her confidence in this tall friend was sufficient, but she could not acknowledge the pain and terror Jud's tears had brought to her. "Well, it can't be for long. The work will soon be completed," urged he, knowing as he spoke how futile his words were. "But it makes me so unhappy," she cried, with a woman's logic. "Poor girl," he smiled. "Let the poor chap work in peace. It will come out all right. I know him. He's ambitious, indefatigable, eager. His soul is in this work. Just now he is winning his spurs in a new line, and his mind, his heart is full of it. Can't you see it all? Put yourself in his place, with his fine temperament, and see how intensely interested you would be. You would be just as much wrapped up in it as he--just as much enraptured, I might say. Brace up, dear girl; Jud can't help but turn out all right. He's bound to win." "The trouble is--the trouble is--" She hesitated so long, staring with wide eyes at the grate fire, that he feared she would not continue--"His heart doesn't seem to be in the work at all." "You mean----?" "I mean, Douglass, that it is not ambition that inspires him just now. There is something on his mind--something else. Oh, I don't know what it can be, but it is unmistakable. He is not the same--not the same in anything except his love for me." Converse was silent for a long time, his eyes on her pale face, his mind busy with conjecture. "I am glad to hear you say that, Celeste," he said at last, a deep sigh escaping involuntarily. "He works feverishly," she went on, as though he had not spoken. "Of course, he is doing the work well. He never did anything badly. But I know he is positively driving himself, Douglass. There isn't anything like the old inspiration, nothing like the old love for the work." "I see it all," he said, relief in his voice. "His heart is not in the work, simply because he is doing it for some one else and not for himself. They told him what they wanted and he is simply breaking his neck, Celeste, to get the job off his hands." "But, listen to me, Douglass," she cried, in despair. "He told me they wanted five pictures--a series of studies from life. The series was to represent five periods in the life of a woman, beginning with childhood and ending in extreme old age. But, Douglass, dear, he is painting landscapes instead." Converse bit his lip.