"How did you come to be so selfish and practical, Paula?" I inquired, in laughing astonishment.
"One grows so, I suppose," she said, taking up palette and brushes, and beginning to work.
"It may be as you say," I said, "when one, as has been your case, passes through a marked process of development; so that the laws which you have just laid down as governing us men are very possibly applicable to yourself. I knew you when you were but fifteen, and you were then a beginner in your art; now, at two-and-twenty, you are an artist, and at five-and-twenty you will be a distinguished one. In your case it is intelligible enough that the Paula of to-day has no longer those romantic illusions--to the future Paula, alas, I cannot venture to raise my thoughts."
"You are jesting, and cruelly too," she said; "and your good face has not the expression that I could wish it to wear at this moment."
"I do not jest at all," I answered emphatically. "I perfectly understand that your claims upon life must rise higher with every year--I might say with every picture you produce."
"Are you really speaking in earnest?"
"Perfectly so; do you not wish to become a great artist?"
"Assuredly," she replied; "but is that within a woman's power? How many out of the hundreds and thousands of inspired girls and women who have turned to the easel or the desk have become great artists? Upon the stage they may; but I have often questioned whether the dramatic art be a true art, or rather a half-art, in which half-talents can reach the highest eminence. And those who are called actors of genius, what are they in comparison with men of true genius in art, in literature, in music? As far beneath them as I am beneath Raphael. And what have I produced so far? Two or three passable heads; a striking scene or so, which I took directly from the life; recollections from books; Richard Cœur de Lion, the Monk--where in these is an original invention, a single trace of real genius? And what is this picture here? What have I done towards it? Little more than mix the colors; the rest is all of your invention. You told me how the sunlight falls in the sandy dunes, how the wind waves the heads of the heath-flowers; you----"
"But Paula, Paula, you talk as if I were painting your picture, and as if you could paint no picture without me."
"And I have painted none without you: there you see my miserable poverty."