But even as it was, I suffered--and justly--from my sin as well as from my sorrow; and most unhappily I brooded over both unsuspected. Cornelius had detected my jealousy, treated it as a jest, and forgotten it; Kate had, I believe, vaguely conjectured its existence, but I was little with her and on my guard; the only one who really knew what I suffered and why I suffered, was the one who had first inflicted and who now daily embittered the wound. Yes, Miriam knew it: I saw it in her look, in her speech, in her manner; and, if anything could render me more unhappy, it was the consciousness that my miserable weakness lay bare for her to triumph over. Thus, and more than thus, I felt. Our true life lies in our heart; from within it, according as we feel with force or weakness, we rule the outward world in which we are cast. Strange and dramatic incidents make not the eventful life: it borrows its charm or tragic power from the ebb and flow of feelings. There never was a child who led a more sheltered existence in a more sheltered home; whose life was less varied by adventure beyond the routine of daily joys and sorrows; and yet to all that I felt then I may trace the whole of my future destiny. When I look back on the past, I feel that but for that which preceded, the plain incidents that are to follow would seem, even to me, tame and trifling; but the stakes make the game, and when happiness has to be lost or won the heart will leap at each throw of the dice, and beat fast or slowly with the faintest alternations of hope and despair. I remember well one day at the close of winter. They both felt tired, and sat on the low couch where I had so often sat by him or watched him sleeping; he now exerted himself to amuse her as he had once done for me; I sat at a table by the window; a book lay open before me, but I could not read; I seemed all eyes, all ears, all sense for them. "You must sit to me some day for a Mary Magdalene," said Cornelius. "You spoke of a Juliet the other day," she replied, with a careless smile; "what am I not to be?" "Say, what should I not be if Cornelius O'Reilly had the power?" "And why should not Cornelius O'Reilly have the power?" Her tone was scarcely above indifference, and yet hard to witness and to know; Cornelius had never looked half so delighted when I boldly assigned him a rank among the princes and masters of his art, as he now seemed with these few ambiguous words of his mistress. He started up to work like one who has received a fresh stimulus to exertion. "I am still tired," coldly said Miriam. "I do not want you yet." "Why work then?" "Oh! Miriam, must not my beautiful Medora progress?" "Your beautiful Medora!" she echoed, with something like scorn passing across her face, and as if she thought that Medora interfered with the rights of Miriam. Cornelius was standing before the easel; I saw him smile at the image it bore.