“Oh!” cried Rosalind again, thinking the apology worse than the fault, bad as that was. “But you have seen pictures--you have been in the galleries?” “Without any instruction,” he said. “I do admire _that_, but I don’t care for the galleries. Oh, but I never say so except to you.” She was silent in the dreadful situation in which she found herself. She did not know how to behave, such unutterable want of perception had never come in her way before. “Then I suppose,” she said, with awful calm, “the chromo-lithographs, those are what you like? Mine is something like them, that is why you approve of it, I suppose?” “I like it,” he said simply, “because you were doing it that day, and because that is where I saw you sitting when everything happened. And because the lake and the mountains and the sky all seem yours to me now.” This speech was of a character very difficult to ignore and pass over as if it meant nothing. But Rosalind had now some experience, and was not unused to such situations. She said hurriedly, “I see--it is the association that interests you. I remember a very great person, a great author, saying something like that. He said it was the story of the pictures he liked, and when that pleased him he did not think so much about the execution. If he had not been a great person he would not have dared to say it. An artist, a true artist, would shiver to hear such a thing. But that explains why you like my daub. It is better than if you really thought it itself worthy of praise.” “But I--” here young Everard paused; he saw by her eyes that he must not go any further, there was a little kindling of indignation in them. Where had he been all his life that he did not know any better than that? Had he gone on, Rosalind might not have been able to contain herself, and there were premonitory symptoms in the air. “I wish,” he said, “that you would tell me what is nice and what isn’t.” “Nice! Oh, Mr, Everard!” Rosalind breathed out with a shudder. “Perhaps you would call Michael Angelo nice,” she added, with a laugh. “It is very likely that I might; you must forgive me. I have a relation who laughs at me in the same way, but how can one know if one has never been taught?”