e from her ideal and purpose,
or should cease to be an artist in becoming a wife. He contended that
there was no real need of that, and though it had happened in most of
the many cases where artists had married artists, he held that it had
happened through the man's selfishness and thoughtlessness, and not
through the conditions. He was resolved that Cornelia should not lose
faith in herself from want of his appreciation, or from her own
over-valuation of his greater skill and school; and he could prove to
any one who listened that she had the rarer gift. He did not persuade
her, with all his reasons, but her mother faithfully believed him. It
had never seemed surprising to her that Cornelia should win a man like
Ludlow; she saw no reason why Cornelia should not; and she could
readily accept the notion of Cornelia's superiority when he advanced
it. She was not arrogant about it; she was simply and entirely
satisfied; and she was every moment so content with Cornelia's husband
that Cornelia herself had to be a little critical of him in
self-defence. She called him a dreamer and theorist; she ran him down
to the Burtons, and said he would never come to anything, because
artists who talked well never painted so well. She allowed that he
talked divinely, and it would not have been safe for Mrs. Burton to
agree with her otherwise; but Mrs. Burton was far too wise a woman to
do so. She did not, perhaps, ride so high a horse as Mrs. Saunders in
her praises of Ludlow, but it would have been as impossible to unseat
her. She regarded herself as somehow the architect of Cornelia's
happiness in having discovered Ludlow and believed in him long before
Cornelia met him, and she could easily see that if he had not come out
to visit Burton, that first time, they would never have met at all.
Mrs. Saunders could joyfully admit this without in the least
relinquishing her own belief, so inarticulate that it was merely part
of her personal consciousness, that this happiness was of as remote an
origin as the foundations of the world. She could see, now, that
nothing else could have been intended from the beginning, but she did
not fail at the same time to credit herself with forethought and wisdom
in bracing Cornelia against the overtures of Dickerson when he
reappeared in her life. Burton, of course, advanced no claim to
recognition in the affair. He enjoyed every moment of Ludlow's stay in
Pymantoning, and gave his work a great deal of humo