As he went on with his "Young Girl Reading," I was struck with the wonderful progress he had made--it more than fulfilled the promise of the Italian sketches. I expressed my admiration without reserve, and I could not but see in his face, how much it gratified him. The time that followed was, indeed, a happy time, as happy as the past, with much that the past had never known. Cornelius looked engrossed and delighted. He worked either with the impassioned ardour of a lover, or with a lingering tenderness as significant. He dwelt _con amore_, over certain bits, or stood back and looked at the whole fondly, through half-shut eyes, drinking in, with evident delight, that sweet intoxication which lies in the contemplation of our own work, when we can behold in it the fulfilment of some cherished idea. But, at the end of a fortnight, there came a change. He looked gloomy, misanthropic, and painted with the air of an angry lover, who has fallen out with his mistress. Ardour had become scorn--tenderness was changed into sullen languor. I guessed that one of his old desponding fits was on him, and, at length, I spoke. It was on a day when, spite of all his efforts, I could see that he scarcely worked. I left my place, and went up to him. For a while, I looked at the picture; then said: "How it progresses." "Wonderfully." "I wish you would not be ironical, Cornelius." "I wish you would not, Daisy." "I only say what I think: that it progresses." Cornelius laughed, but by no means cheerfully. "I know you long for me to praise it," I observed, quietly. "Indeed, I do not," he interrupted. "Yes, you do: it would give you so good an opportunity of abusing it." "Do you kindly mean to spare me the trouble?" "No; for then you would defend it against all my criticisms. I know very well how you rate your picture, Cornelius." "Do you?" "Yes; I do. You know it will make your reputation; that it will be praised and admired; but it fails in something on which you have set your heart, and, though it may do for the world, it will not do for Cornelius O'Reilly, his own severest judge, public and critic." "Oh, you witch!" he replied, unable to repress a smile. "Do you not like it better now?" I asked, thinking the cloud was beginning to break. "No, Daisy. It is the old story; something within me to which, do what I will, I cannot give birth; it is this torments me, Daisy, it is this." "And let it be this," I replied gravely; "let it be this, Cornelius, you will be better than your pictures: if you were not, if you could give all to art, would art be any longer worth living for? Where would be the mystery, the desire, the hope, the charm, to lure you on for ever. I dare say painting resembles life; and that to feel I am better than my pictures, is like the pleasure of feeling 'I am better than my destiny.'" "And what do you know about that pleasure?" asked Cornelius.