brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow
me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You
think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me
a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I
colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I
scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh:
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not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. That is just as fixed as a
rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I
am—a cold hard man.”
I smiled incredulously.
“You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and
now it is much at your service. I am simply, in my original state—
stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity
covers human deformity—a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural
affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over
me. Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is
unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more than others,
insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent;
because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and
mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest,
because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic
woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone
through, or what you still suffer.”
“You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I
said.
“No. There is this difference between me and deistic
philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your
epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher—a follower
of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful,
His benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to spread
them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original
qualities thus:— rom the minute germ, natural affection, she has
developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild
stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of
the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for
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my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my
Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the
cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original
materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But
she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘till this
mortal shall put on immortality.’”
Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside
my palette. once more he looked at the portrait.
“She is lovely,” he murmured. “She is well named the Rose of
the World, indeed!”
“And may I not paint one like it for you?”
“Cui Bono? No.”
He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was
accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard
from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it
was impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye.
He took it up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a
glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible:
a glance that "};
