"I beg your pardon," replied Cornelius, with a start that showed he had forgotten her presence, "but Daisy and the palette are used to it, and there are things would provoke Saint Luke himself, saint and painter though he was. Would you believe it? I cannot render the thoughtful look of that child's eyes otherwise than by a stare!"
He spoke quite mournfully: Miriam laughed; her lover looked astonished.
"What about it?" she said.
"Why, that I am painting a bad picture."
"What matter?"
"And the disappointment! the shame!"
"Be more philosophic," she coolly replied: "success is but a chance."
"Begging your pardon, Miriam, it is a chance that falls to the good pictures, consequently it is worth any toil, any sacrifice."
"Yes," she replied, with reproach in the very carelessness of her tone, "you are, like all men, absorbed in your ambition."
"Would you have me sit down in idleness?"