'Perfectly!' and Delicia smiled full into his eyes; 'I should, indeed, be ungrateful if I were not.'
He made a slight movement of impatience.
'Ungrateful! How strange that word sounds from your lips! Why use it at all? You are surely the last person on earth who should speak of gratitude, for you owe no one anything. You have worked for your fame,—worked harder than anyone I know,—and you have won it; you have given out the treasures of your genius to the public, and they reward you by their love and honour; it is a natural sequence of cause and effect. There is no reason why you should be grateful for what is merely the just recognition of your worth.'
'You think not?' said Delicia, still smiling. 'Ah, but I cannot quite agree with you! You see there have been so many who have toiled for fame and never won it,—so many who have poured out the "treasures of their genius," to quote your own words, on a totally unappreciative world which has never recognised them till long after they are dead. And that is why I consider one cannot be too grateful for a little kindness from one's fellow-creatures while one is living; though, if you ask the Press people, they will tell you it's a very bad sign of your quality as an author if you succeed. The only proofs of true genius are, never to sell one's books at all, die burdened with debts and difficulties, and leave your name and fame to be glorified by a posterity whom you will never know!'
Valdis laughed; and Delicia, her eyes sparkling with fun, rose from her chair and took up a newspaper from one of the side tables close by.
'Listen!' she said. 'This appears in yesterday's Morning Chanticleer, apropos of your humble servant—"The rampant lady-novelist, known as Delicia Vaughan, is at it again. Not content with having married 'Beauty' Carlyon of the Guards, who has just stepped into his deceased brother's titled shoes and is now Lord Carlyon, she is about to issue a scathing book on the manners and morals of the present age, written, no doubt, in the usual hysterical style affected by female poseurs in literature, whose works appeal chiefly to residents up Brixton and Clapham way. We regret that 'Lady' Carlyon does not see the necessity of 'assuming dignity,' even if she hath it not, on her elevation, through her husband, to the circles of the 'upper ten.'" There, what do you think of that?' she asked gaily, as she flung the journal down.
Valdis had risen, and stood confronting her with frowning brow and flashing eyes. 'Think of it!' he said angrily, 'Why, that I should like to horse-whip the dirty blackguard who wrote it!'
Delicia looked up at him in genuine amazement.
'Dear me!' she exclaimed playfully. 'But why so fierce, friend Ernani? This is nothing—nothing at all to what the papers generally say of me. I don't mind it in the least; it rather amuses me, on the whole.'
'But don't you see how they mistake the position?' exclaimed Valdis, impetuously. 'Don't you see that they are giving your husband all the honour of elevation to the circles of the upper ten; as if you were not there already by the merit of your genius alone! What would Lord Carlyon be without you, even were he twenty times a lord! He owes everything to you, and to your brain-work; he is nothing in himself, and less than nothing! There,—I have gone too far!'