She moved restlessly in his embrace, and presently, gently putting him aside, rose from the breakfast-table and pretended to busy herself with the arrangement of some flowers on the mantelpiece.

'I have been reading philosophy,' she answered him, with a tremulous little laugh. 'Grim old cynics, both ancient and modern, who say that nothing lasts on earth, and that the human soul is made of such imperishable stuff that it is always out-reaching one emotion after another and striving to attain the highest perfection. If this be true, then even human love is poor and trifling compared to love divine!' Her eyes darkened with intensity of feeling. 'At least, so say some of our sage instructors; and if it be indeed a fact that mortal things are but the passing shadow of immortal ones, it is natural enough that we should gradually outlive the temporal in our desire for the eternal.'

Carlyon looked at her wonderingly; she met his gaze fully, her eyes shining with a pure light that almost dazzled him.

'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.'