"I am not so old as to have my age thrown in my face!" he replied, looking piqued. "I am only a few years beyond legal infancy."
"You ought to be ages beyond thinking and speaking as you do. If you have no faith in yourself, why do you paint at all? If I were a man, I would rather be a shoemaker or a tailor, than an artist without faith."
"On my word," said Cornelius, looking very angry, "you do speak strongly."
"Because I have faith in you," I replied, passing my arm around his neck, and looking into his averted face. "Call the picture bad, but do not say you have no genius. It cuts me to the heart, indeed it does. Besides, I cannot believe it. I never look at your face, but I seem to see the word 'Genius' written there."
And, as I spoke, I laid my lips on a brow where eyes less prejudiced than mine might have read the same story. A sudden and burning glow overspread the features of Cornelius; he looked another way, and bit his lips, as if seeking for calmness, as striving to curb down that impatient fever of the blood which, in good or in evil, it is always a sort of pain to betray. I half drew back, thinking him vexed again, but he detained me; and turning towards me a flushed and troubled face, he said with a forced laugh:
"Your head has been turned by reading those Lives of the Painters, and you want to turn mine too. To satisfy you, I should be the first painter in England."
"In England!" I echoed; "in Christendom, Sir."
"Rather high-flown, Daisy. Besides that it sounds like a reminiscence of the seven champions."
"High-flown! Ambition is a bird of high feather, Cornelius. I would scorn to aim at the second place when there is the first to win."
"Oh! you witch!" he said again, "how well you know me!"