‘I can’t follow all your transcendental theories,’ he said, half pettishly; ‘I never could. I have always told you that you can’t get reasoning men to care about any other life than this one—they don’t see it; they don’t want it. Heaven doesn’t suggest itself to them as at all a jolly sort of place, and you know, if you come to think of it, you’d rather not have an angel to love you; you’d much rather have a woman.’ ‘Speak for yourself, my dear Will,’ answered Delicia, with a slight smile. ‘If angels, such as I imagine them to be, exist at all, I should much prefer to be loved by one of them than by a man. The angel’s love might last; the man’s would not. We see these things from different points of view. And as for this life, I assure you I am not at all charmed with it.’ ‘Good heavens! You’ve got everything you want,’ exclaimed Carlyon, ‘Even fame, which so rarely attends a woman!’ ‘Yes, and I know the value of it!’ she responded. ‘Fame, literally translated, means slander. Do you think I am not able to estimate it at its true worth? Do you think I am ignorant of the fact that I am followed by the lies and envies and hatreds of the unsuccessful? Or that I shut my eyes to the knowledge of the enmity that everywhere pursues me? If I were old, if I were poor, if I were ugly, and had scarcely a gown to my back, and still wrote books, I should be much more liked than I am. I daresay some rich people might even be found willing to “patronise” me!’ She laughed disdainfully. ‘But when these same rich people discover that I can afford to patronise _them_,—who is there that can rightly estimate the measure or the violence of their antipathy for me? Yet when I say I am not charmed with life, I only mean the “social” life; I do not mean the life of nature—of that I am never tired.’ ‘Well, this morning, at any rate, you appear to be tired of me,’ said Carlyon, irritably. ‘So I suppose I’d better get out of your way!’ She made no answer whatever. He fidgeted about a little, then began to grumble again. ‘I’m sorry you’re in such a bad humour.’ At this she raised her eyebrows in smiling protest. ‘Yes, you know you’re in a bad humour,’ he went on obstinately; ‘you pretend you’re not, but you are. And I wanted to ask you a question on your own business affairs.’ ‘Pray ask it!’ said Delicia, still smiling. ‘Though, before you speak, let me assure you my business affairs are in perfect order.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he went on uneasily; ‘these d——d publishers often wriggle out of bargains, and try to “do” a woman. That firm, now—the one that has just published your last book—have they paid you?’ ‘They have,’ she answered with composure. ‘They are, though publishers, still honourable men.’ ‘It was to be eight thousand, wasn’t it?’ he asked, looking down at the lapels of his well-fitting morning-coat and flicking a speck of dust off the cloth. ‘It was, and it is,’ she answered. ‘I paid four thousand of it into your bank yesterday.’