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"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.