not thought it beneath him to
touch up for Clary's delectation and glory. If Will would only have
tarried longer about his flowers and bees, and groves and rattlesnakes:
if he had even stopped short at faces like those of Socrates, Caesar,
Cleopatra, Fair Rosamond--what people could understand with help--and
not slid off faster and more fatally into that dim delirium of good and
evil, angels and archangels, the devil of temptation and the goblin of
the flesh, the red fiend of war, and the pale spirit of peace!

The difference which originated at Will and Dulcie's marriage had
ended in alienation. Dulcie thought that Sam Winnington would have
bridged it over at one time, if Will would have made any sign of
meeting his overtures, or acknowledged Sam's talents and fortune: nay,
even if Will had refrained from betraying his churlish doubts of Sam's
perfect deserts.

But no, this Will would not deign to do. The gentle, patient painter,
contented with his own estimation of his endowments, and resigned to
be misjudged and neglected by the world, had his own indomitable
doggedness. He would never flatter the world's low taste for
commonplace, and its miserable short-sightedness; he would never pay
homage to Sam Winnington which he did not deserve--a man very far from
his equal--a mere clever portrait-painter, little better than a
skilled stonemason. Thus Sam Winnington and Will Locke took to
flushing when each other's names were mentioned--sitting bolt upright
and declining to comment on each other's works, or else dismissing
each other's efforts in a few supremely contemptuous words. Certainly
the poor man rejected the rich not one whit less decidedly than the
rich man rejected the poor, and the Mordecais have always the best of
it. If we and our neighbours will pick out each other's eyes, commend
us to the part of brave little Jack, rather than that of the
belligerent Giant, even when they are only eyeing each other previous
to sitting down to the ominous banquet.

But this was a difficulty to Dulcie, as it is to most women. No one
thinks of men's never showing a malign influence in this world; it is
only good women who are expected to prove angels outright here below.
But it does seem that there is something more touching in their having
to stifle lawful instincts, and in their being forced to oppose and
overcome unlawful passions--covetousness, jealousy, wrath, "hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness."

Dulcie, with