“No, oh no,” said Will, with some coldness.  “I have quite made up my mind against it.  It is too one-sided a life.  I have been seeing a great deal of the German artists here:  I travelled from Frankfort with one of them.  Some are fine, even brilliant fellows—­ but I should not like to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the studio point of view.”

“That I can understand,” said Dorothea, cordially.  “And in Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.  But if you have a genius for painting, would it not be right to take that as a guide?  Perhaps you might do better things than these—­or different, so that there might not be so many pictures almost all alike in the same place.”

There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into frankness.  “A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort.  I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while.  And I should never succeed in anything by dint of drudgery.  If things don’t come easily to me I never get them.”

“I have heard Mr. Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience,” said Dorothea, gently.  She was rather shocked at this mode of taking all life as a holiday.

“Yes, I know Mr. Casaubon’s opinion.  He and I differ.”

The slight streak of contempt in this hasty reply offended Dorothea.  She was all the more susceptible about Mr. Casaubon because of her morning’s trouble.

“Certainly you differ,” she said, rather proudly.  “I did not think of comparing you:  such power of persevering devoted labor as Mr. Casaubon’s is not common.”

Will saw that she was offended, but this only gave an additional impulse to the new irritation of his latent dislike towards Mr. Casaubon.  It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping this husband:  such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question.  Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

“No, indeed,” he answered, promptly.  “And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown away, as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world.  If Mr. Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble.”

“I do not understand you,” said Dorothea, startled and anxious.

“I merely mean,” said Will, in an offhand way, “that the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have made good roads.  When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw that he deafened himself in that direction:  it was almost against his will that he read a Latin treatise written by a German.  I was very sorry.”