I'm
counting on your help, you know," he smiled a little wistfully, as he
held out his hand in good-by.

One minute later Alice Greggory, alone, was hurrying up-stairs.

"I can't--I can't--I know I can't," she was whispering wildly. Then,
in her own room, she faced herself in the mirror. "Yes--you--can, Alice
Greggory," she asserted, with swift change of voice and manner. "This
is _your_ tiger skin, and you're going to fight it. Do you
understand?--fight it! And you're going to win, too. Do you want that
man to know you--_care_?"

CHAPTER VI. "THE PAINTING LOOK"

It was toward the last of October that Billy began to notice her
husband's growing restlessness. Twice, when she had been playing to
him, she turned to find him testing the suppleness of his injured arm.
Several times, failing to receive an answer to her questions, she had
looked up to discover him gazing abstractedly at nothing in particular.

They read and walked and talked together, to be sure, and Bertram's
devotion to her lightest wish was beyond question; but more and more
frequently these days Billy found him hovering over his sketches in his
studio; and once, when he failed to respond to the dinner-bell,
search revealed him buried in a profound treatise on "The Art of
Foreshortening."

Then came the day when Billy, after an hour's vain effort to imprison
within notes a tantalizing melody, captured the truant and rain down to
the studio to tell Bertram of her victory.

But Bertram did not seem even to hear her. True, he leaped to his feet
and hurried to meet her, his face radiantly aglow; but she had not
ceased to speak before he himself was talking.

"Billy, Billy, I've been sketching," he cried. "My hand is almost
steady. See, some of those lines are all right! I just picked up a
crayon and--" He stopped abruptly, his eyes on Billy's face. A vaguely
troubled shadow crossed his own. "Did--did you--were you saying anything
in--in particular, when you came in?" he stammered.

For a short half-minute Billy looked at her husband without speaking.
Then, a little queerly, she laughed.

"Oh, no, nothing at all in _particular_," she retorted airily. The next
moment, with one of her unexpected changes of manner, she darted across
the room, picked up a palette, and a handful of brushes from the
long box near it. Advancing toward her husband she held them out
dramatically. "And now paint, my lord, paint!" she commanded him, with
stern insisten