A tender woman, made sublime by her despair, seeking on a field of battle the body of the man she loved most,--a thing of primitive passion such as must move all humanity. What if it were hackneyed! All the more distinctly would it be apparent which was the touch of the real power which could embody the scene, and which the mere painter of costumed figures. Such were Laurie’s thoughts as he sat, discouraged and cast down, before his picture,--poor fellow!--after Forrester’s visit. If the man’s criticisms had so much effect upon him, what would the master’s have had? What could he have said to the padrona had it been she who had come to look at his picture? Then the long array of names which Forrester had quoted came back upon him. In short, poor Laurie had received a downright unexpected blow, and ached and smarted under it, as was natural to a sensitive being loving applause and approbation. He turned his back on Edith for the rest of the day, throwing open his windows, to Miss Hadley’s astonishment, the first time for a week, and affording her a dim vision of a figure thrown into an arm-chair by the fire, with a novel. It was the first time since he came to Charlotte Street that he had in broad daylight and cold blood given himself over to such an indulgence. He was disgusted with his work and himself. He had not the heart to go out. He could not go to the Square, where probably by this time they were all laughing over his folly. He read his novel doggedly all the afternoon, in sight of Miss Hadley, who could not tell what to make of it. The light was gone and the day lost before he roused himself, and pitched his book into the farthest corner. His kindly spy could not tell what the perverse young fellow would do next. Probably go and have his dinner, she said to herself; which, indeed, Laurie did; and came home much better, beginning to be able to laugh at Forrester, and snap his fingers at his predecessors. ‘The more reason it should be done now,’ he said to himself, ‘if Suffolk, and Severn, and all those fellows broke down over it.’ And he suffered a little gleam of self-complacency to steal over his face, and went to work all night at his sketch, to improve and perfect the composition. So that, on the whole, Laurie, though no genius, had that nobler quality of genius which overcomes all criticism and surmounts every discouragement. He had been shut up long enough in silence with his conception. That day, he made up his mind, instead of permitting himself to be ignominiously snubbed by old Forrester, that he would face the world, and carry the sketch which he was completing to the padrona herself. CHAPTER XXI. WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF IT IN THE SQUARE.