here are
constitutions that, once shaken, can never be restored; there are
characters that, once outraged, become saddened for evermore. The
fairest flowers and the sweetest, are those which, if trampled down,
never hold up their heads again. But I do mean, that should man or
woman be capable of cure under sufferings originating in misplaced
confidence, such cure is most readily effected by a modified attack of
the same nature, at the risk of misplacing it again.

After Dick Stanmore's first visit to the painting-room in Berners
Street, it was astonishing how enthusiastic a taste he contracted for
art. He was never tired of contemplating his friend's great picture,
and Simon used laughingly to declare the amateur knew every line and
shade of colour in his Fairy Queen as accurately as the painter.
He remained in London at a season which could have afforded few
attractions for a young man of his previous habits, and came every day
to the painting-room as regularly as the model herself. Thus it fell
out that Dick, religiously superintending the progress of this Fairy
Queen, found his eyes wandering perpetually from the representation on
canvas to its original on Miss Algernon's shoulders, and gratified his
sense of sight with less scruple, that from the very nature of her
occupation she was compelled to keep her head always turned one way.

It must have been agreeable for Nina, no doubt, if not improving, to
listen to Dick's light and rather trivial conversation which relieved
the monotony of her task, and formed a cheerful addition to the short,
jerking, preoccupied sentences of the artist, enunciated obviously
at random, and very often with a brush in his mouth. Nor was it
displeasing, I imagine, to be aware of Mr. Stanmore's admiration,
forsaking day by day its loudly-declared allegiance to the Fairy
Queen in favour of her living prototype, deepening gradually to long
intervals of silence, sweeter, more embarrassing, while far more
eloquent than words.

And all the time, Simon, the chivalrous, painted on. I cannot believe
but that, with the jealous instinct of true affection, he must have
perceived the ground slipping away, hour by hour, from beneath his
feet--must have seen the ship that carried all his cargo sailing
farther and farther into a golden distance to leave him desolate on
the darkening shore. How his brain may have reeled, and his heart
ached, it is not for me to speculate. There is a decency of courage,