"I see that, as my attitudes are spoiled, I [must] release you. Ah, Daisy is the best sitter of the two," he added, as his sister jumped up with great alacrity; and he thanked me with a caress so kind, that Kate said, in a displeased tone—
"You may make that child too fond of you, Cornelius."
"And if I do, Kate, have I not the antidote? Am I not getting very fond of her myself?"
He was, and I knew it; and daily rejoiced in the blessed consciousness.
Spring yielded to summer; summer passed; the picture progressed;
Cornelius devoted to it his brief holiday in the autumn.
"You look pale and ill," said Kate; "you want rest."
"I feel in perfect health; work is my holiday," was his invariable reply.
And to work he fell—harder than ever.
"Yes, yes," she sadly said, "the fever is on you."
The fever was indeed on him; that strange, engrossing fever to which passion is nothing; which to the strong is life, but death to the weak. He revelled in it as in a new, free, delightful existence. Pale and thin he was, but his brow had never been more serene, his glance more hopeful, his whole bearing more living and energetic. But as autumn waned, as days grew short, as leisure to work lessened, the serenity of Cornelius vanished. He rose long before dawn and paced his little studio up and down, impatiently watching the east: with the first streak of daylight he was at work, and day after day it became more difficult to tear him from his task. When he came home at dusk, his first act was to run up to his picture. I often followed him unnoticed, and found him standing before it, fastening on his unfinished labour a concentrated look that seemed as if it would struggle against fate and annihilate the laws of time. When he turned away, it was with an impatient sigh unmixed with the least atom of resignation.