"Then it is not too late to undo all this."
"I don't understand you, dear."
"You have never spoken to him--you have given him no encouragement--he knows nothing of your infatuation. Such being the case, he need never know. We will go to his studio no more. Some other artist shall paint your portrait. Mr. Fildew shall be quietly dropped, and in few weeks you will have forgotten that any such person had an existence in your thoughts."
Cecilia laughed, but there was a ring of bitterness in her mirth. "I might be listening to the maxims of Lady Loughton or my Aunt Percival," she said. "But you have never loved, therefore I cannot expect you to sympathize with me."
"But you certainly would not marry this man, Cecilia?"
"I have never thought of marrying either 'this man,' as you call him, or any other man. But I certainly should not marry any one unless I did love him."
"I consider it a great impertinence on the part of Mr. Fildew to have addressed you at all."
"In what way is it an impertinence, Mora? However much we poor women may care for a man we cannot write to him and tell him so. We must wait till it pleases him to write or speak. Mr. Fildew is an artist and a gentleman. Perhaps I should not be far wrong in calling him a man of genius. It is I who ought to feel honored by the love of such a man."
"I cannot think where you contrive to pick up your strange ideas."
"Strange ideas, indeed! Why, Mora, with all my love for you, I believe you are one of those women who would rather marry a dunderhead with ten thousand a year than a Milton in a ragged coat."