The Breaking of the Storm by Friedrich Spielhagen

For Ferdinanda the night had had no terrors, the morning no darkness. In her soul was brightest day, for the first time for many months; for the first time, indeed, she thought, since she knew what a passionate, proud, ambitious heart beat in her bosom. They had often told her -- in former days, her mother; later, her aunt, her friends, all -- that it would one day bring her unhappiness, and that pride went before a fall; and she had always answered scornfully, "Then I will be unhappy; I will fall, if happiness is only to be had at the mean price of humility, which always grovels in the dust before fate, and sings hymns of praise if the wheels of envious fate have only grazed and not crushed her. I am not like Justus or Cilli."

And she had been unhappy, even in the hours when the enthusiastic artists -- Justus's friends -- had done homage in unmeasured terms to the blooming beauty of the young girl; when these men praised her talents, told her she was on the right road to become an artist; finally, that she was an artist -- a true artist. She did not believe them; and if she really were an artist, there were so many greater ones -- even Justus's hand reached so much higher and further than hers; laughing, and apparently without trouble, he gathered fruits for which she strove with the most intense effort, and which, as she secretly acknowledged to herself, must always be beyond her reach.