"I don't think she is really hard, for she adores her husband, and devotes all her time and all her talents to helping him politically. He is Postmaster-General, you know; and is bound to get still higher office some day."
"Have they any children?"
"No; only politics."
"What is he like? I have never seen him."
"He is an interesting man, and an extremely able one. I should think that as a husband he would be too self-opinionated for my taste; but he and his wife seem to suit each other down to the ground. Some women like self-opinionated men."
"I suppose they do."
"And after all," Elisabeth went on, "if one goes in for a distinguished husband, one must pay the price for the article. It is absurd to shoot big game, and then expect to carry it home in a market-basket."
"Still it annoys you when men say the same of you, and suggest that an ordinary lump of sugar would have sweetened Antony's vinegar more successfully than did Cleopatra's pearl. Your conversation and my art have exhausted themselves to prove that this masculine imagination is a delusion and a snare; yet the principle must be the same in both cases."
"Not at all; woman's greatness is of her life a thing apart: 'tis man's whole existence."
"Do you think so?" asked Cecil, with that tender look of his which expressed so much and meant so little. "You don't know how cold a man feels when his heart is empty."