I obeyed, but I could not give my attention to the lessons.
"Child," impatiently said Cornelius, "what can you be thinking of?"
I was thinking that he was not to be an artist; that he had given up painting, fame, and fortune; and, as he put the question, I burst into tears.
"I understand," quietly said Cornelius: "you do not know your lessons."
He closed the book, went to the piano, and sang as usual.
It was plain Cornelius rejected sympathy. He showed no pity to himself, and would accept none from others. If he suffered, the jealous pride of youth would not let him confess it, yet we could see that he was not happy. He set about looking for another situation, with the dogged sort of satisfaction a man may find in choosing the rope with which he is to hang himself. His pleasant face contracted a bitter expression; his good- humoured smile became ironical and sarcastic; he had fits of the most dreary merriment; of pity he was so resentfully suspicious that we scarcely dared to look at him. Three weeks had thus elapsed, when, as I sat with Kate and Cornelius in the garden, I ventured, thinking him in a better mood than usual, to say, in my most insinuating accents—
"Cornelius, what will be the subject of your next picture?"
He turned round and gave me a look so stern that I drew back half frightened.
"How dare you be so presuming?" said Kate, indignantly.
I did not reply, but after a while I left them. I re-entered the house, and stole up to the studio, there to brood in peace over what it was now an offence to remember. The easel stood against the wall; the papers and portfolios were covered with dust; a sketch of a group of trees—the last thing on which I had seen Cornelius engaged—lay on the table unfinished, but soiled with lying about. I opened one of the portfolios: it contained the drawings he most valued. I took them out, and, kneeling on the floor, spread them around me. Absorbed in looking at them, I never heard Cornelius enter, until his voice said close to me—