“I quite agree with you,” said Will, determined to change the situation—­ “so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that risk of never attaining a failure.  Mr. Casaubon’s generosity has perhaps been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has given me.  I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own way—­ depend on nobody else than myself.”

“That is fine—­I respect that feeling,” said Dorothea, with returning kindness.  “But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything in the matter except what was most for your welfare.”

“She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she has married him,” said Will to himself.  Aloud he said, rising—­

“I shall not see you again.”

“Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes,” said Dorothea, earnestly.  “I am so glad we met in Rome.  I wanted to know you.”?

“And I have made you angry,” said Will.  “I have made you think ill of me.”

“Oh no.  My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not say just what I like.  But I hope I am not given to think ill of them.  In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself. for being so impatient.”

“Still, you don’t like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to you.”

“Not at all,” said Dorothea, with the most open kindness.  “I like you very much.”

Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have been of more importance if he had been disliked.  He said nothing, but looked dull, not to say sulky.

“And I am quite interested to see what you will do,” Dorothea went on cheerfully.  “I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation.  If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow—­ there are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant of.  You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and literature, which you know so much of.  I wonder what your vocation will turn out to be:  perhaps you will be a poet?”

“That depends.  To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—­a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.  One may have that condition by fits only.”

“But you leave out the poems,” said Dorothea.  “I think they are wanted to complete the poet.  I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.  But I am sure I could never produce a poem.”

“You are a poem—­and that is to be the best part of a poet—­ what makes up the poet’s consciousness in his best moods,” said Will, showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the spring-time and other endless renewals.