"It was Lord Bacon," said Anne, "who always wanted musicians playing in the next room while he was composing."
"He did?" said Nina. "Why, how delightful of him! I think I should like to hear some of his essays."
"There are some minds," said Clayton, "large enough to take in everything. Such men can talk as prettily of a ring on a lady's finger, as they can wisely on the courses of the planets. Nothing escapes them."
"That's the kind of man you ought to have for a lover, Anne," said Nina, laughing; "you have weight enough to risk it. I'm such a little whisk of thistle-down that it would annihilate me. Such a ponderous weight of wisdom attached to me would drag me under water, and drown me. I should let go my line, I think, if I felt such a fish bite."
"You are tolerably safe in our times," said Clayton. "Nature only sends such men once in a century or two. They are the road-makers for the rest of the world. They are quarry-masters, that quarry out marble enough for a generation to work up."
"Well," said Nina, "I shouldn't want to be a quarry-master's wife. I should be afraid that some of his blocks would fall on me."
"Why, wouldn't you like it, if he were wholly your slave?" said Frank Russel. "It would be like having the genius of the lamp at your feet."
"Ah," said Nina, "if I could keep him my slave; but I'm afraid he'd outwit me at last. Such a man would soon put me up on a shelf for a book read through. I've seen some great men,—I mean great for our times,—and they didn't seem to care half as much for their wives as they did for a newspaper."
"Oh," said Anne, "that's past praying for, with any husband. The newspaper is the standing rival of the American lady. It must be a warm lover that can be attracted from that, even before he is secure of his prize."