Henry’s short story “A Service of Love,” tells the story of two artists: Joe and Delia Larrabee. Joe, an artist since he was six, moved to New York to be a painter, and Delia moved north to develop her natural talents at the piano. Once they fell in love, they moved in together—poor, but happy.

Joe and Delia studied under famous and expensive teachers—Joe with Mr. Magister and Delia with Herr Rosenstock:

Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister—you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light—his high-lights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock—you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys.

Because they were already poor, the extra cost of the expensive lessons forced the two of them to seek other sources of money. To save money, Delia tells Joe that she will give up her lessons and began teaching her own students for $15 a lesson. She insists that he keep painting because she believes that she will continue to learn about her art while she’s earning for them.

Each week she comes home with the money and brings stories of how her pupil, Clementina, is progressing and details about their beautiful home:

"Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General—General A. B. Pinkney's daughter—on Seventy-first street. Such a splendid house, Joe—you ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before"

Joe notices that Delia begins coming home tired and with strange injuries. Finally, when she comes home wrapped in bandages, Joe asks for the truth. In the end, Delia confesses that she has not been teaching anyone because she was not able to find any students. Instead, she’s been working in a laundry, and that day she was burned “when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon.”

Delia’s confession sparks one from Joe; he admits that he hasn’t been selling any art while Delia’s been working. Instead, he’s been working in the engine room of a laundry service—the same laundry Delia’s been working at. How did he figure it out? That very day he:

sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron.

Now he realizes that the girl was his Delia.