“What shall I call you?” said the young advocate with shining eyes. “Shall I call you Diomeda?”
“Do, my beloved Achilles!”
“How do you come to have heard about him? Is it that Greek is compulsory in the University of the Gutter?”
“Achilles was perfectly familiar to me before I attended it. My dear father used to tell us stories from Homer when he was drunk.”
“Well, Diomeda, I have come to believe that your father must have been a very remarkable man.”
“The world will arrive at a similar belief two hundred years hence. But how can you have acquired such an important piece of information concerning him when you have never seen one of his works?”
“Do not forget that for the past hour I have been gazing upon his chef-d’œuvre, the masterpiece among his masterpieces.”
“On the contrary, my beloved, you are judging him by his one great failure. In conception, in design, I have no peer in this time of ours, but the inspiration of the artist failed suddenly and lamentably before he could touch me with the magic that would have rendered me immortal. I am a splendid thing, my beloved, but I shall perish. Therefore the artist has failed.”
“This is a masculine intellect of yours,” said Northcote, who was captivated by the celerity with which she had interpreted an idea that in his own mind had still the nebulosity of recent birth. “Is it usual to your sex to have such powers?”
“You will confess that you would not say so? Are they not eternally dunces and fools in the austere eyes of the male?”