There was no real offence between her and Ludlow, or any but such as could wear itself away with time and the custom of friendly meeting. He had the magnanimity to ignore it when he first saw her after that Thursday of Mrs. Westley's, and she had too keen a sense of having been a fool not to wish to act more wisely as soon as she could forget. There came so long a lapse between the letters of Mr. Dickerson that he ceased, at least perpetually, to haunt her thoughts. She had moments when it seemed as if she might justly consent to be happy again, or at least allow herself to enjoy the passing pleasure of the time without blame. She even suffered herself to fancy taking up the picture of Charmian, and carrying it farther under Ludlow's criticism. She was very ambitious to try her fate with the Academy, and when he offered so generously to help her again, as if she had not refused him once so rudely, she could not deny him. She found herself once more in Charmian's studio, and it all began to go on the same as if it had never stopped. It seemed like a dream, sometimes, when she thought about it, and it did not seem like a very wise dream. Cornelia now wished, above all things, to have a little bit of sense, as she phrased it in her thoughts; and she was aware that the present position of affairs might look rather crazy to some people. The best excuse for it was that it would have looked crazier yet if she had refused such an opportunity simply because of the circumstances. She began to be a little vague about the circumstances, and whether they were queer because she had fancied a likeness of herself in Mr. Ludlow's picture of Charmian, or because she had afterwards made a fool of herself so irreparably as to be unworthy Mr. Ludlow's kindness. If it was merely kindness, and she was the object of charity, it was all right; she could accept it on those terms. She even tempted him to patronize her, but when he ventured upon something elderly and paternal in his monitions, she resented it so fiercely that she was astonished and ashamed. There was an inconsistency in it all that was perplexing, but not so perplexing as to spoil the pleasure of it. There were not sittings every day, now; Ludlow came once or twice a week, and criticised her work; sometimes he struck off a sketch himself, in illustration of a point, and these sketches were now so unlike Cornelia, and so wholly like Charmian, that when he left them for her guidance, she studied them with a remote ache in her heart. "Never mind," Charmian consoled her once, "he just does it on purpose." "Does what?" Cornelia demanded awfully. "Oh, nothing!" One of the sketches he fancied so much that he began to carry it forward. He worked at it whenever he came, and under his hand it grew an idealized Charmian, in which her fantastic quality expressed itself as high imagination, and her formless generosity as a wise and noble magnanimity.