"It is not conceit, Kate; it is the superior attraction of Art over passion. How is it you do not see there is and can be nothing like painting pictures?" Kate groaned. "It beats all else hollow,--poetry, music, ambition, war, and love, which is held master of all. Alexander, unhappy man! wept because he had no more worlds to win. Did Apelles ever weep for having no more pictures to paint? Paris carried off Helen to Troy, which was taken after a ten years' siege. Imagine Paris an artist; he paints Helen under a variety of attitudes: Menelaus benevolently looking on; little Hermione plays near her mamma; Troy stands in the distance, with Priam on the walls; everything peace and harmony.--Moral: if fine gentlemen would take the portraits, and not the persons of fair ladies, we should not hear so much of invaded hearths and affairs of honour." "Will you talk seriously?" impatiently said Kate. "As seriously as you can wish," he replied gravely. "What do you fear for me? It is late to begin, but I have been working hard these two years. What about our poor father? many a great painter has been the son of a disappointed artist. What even about the difficulty of winning fame? I am ambitious, not so much to be famous, as to do great things. There is the aim of a life; there is the glorious victory to win." His handsome face had never looked half so handsome: it expressed daring, power, hope, ardour, all that subdues the future to a man's will. "I tell you," he resumed, with a short triumphant laugh, "that I shall succeed. I feel the power within me; I shall give fame to the name of O'Reilly, stuff your pockets with money, charm your eyes with fair forms; in short I shall conquer Art." He passed his arm around his sister's neck, and gave her a warm kiss. She half smiled. "That always was the way," she said, with a sigh: "I argued; you talked me out of my better knowledge, and then you would put your arm around my neck, and--" "There was no resisting that, Kate; but then I looked up, and now I look down." "Yes, you are a man now," she replied, looking at him with an admiring smile, "and the O'Reillys have always been fine men." "And the women lovely, gifted, admired--" "And minded as much as the whistling of the wind. Don't look vexed, my poor boy. I know I am not fair to you; that many a son is not so good and dutiful to his mother as you are to me; but, you see, it is as if you had been marrying a girl I hated; I can't get over it, even though I feel you have a right to please yourself. The best course will be not to talk of it: we should not agree; and where's the use of disagreeing?" "If wives were as sensible as you are--" "Nonsense!" she interrupted, smiling; "no woman of spirit would give in to her husband; but to her boy! oh, that's very different. Please yourself; paint your pictures, my darling, only--only--if the public don't like them, don't break your heart."