'Pray ask it!' said Delicia, still smiling. 'Though, before you speak, let me assure you my business affairs are in perfect order.'
'Oh, I don't know,' he went on uneasily; 'these d——d publishers often wriggle out of bargains, and try to "do" a woman. That firm, now—the one that has just published your last book—have they paid you?'
'They have,' she answered with composure. 'They are, though publishers, still honourable men.'
'It was to be eight thousand, wasn't it?' he asked, looking down at the lapels of his well-fitting morning-coat and flicking a speck of dust off the cloth.
'It was, and it is,' she answered. 'I paid four thousand of it into your bank yesterday.'
His eyes flashed.
'By Jove! What a clever little woman you are!' he exclaimed. 'Fancy getting all that cash out of your brain-pan! It's quite a mystery to me how you do it, you know! I can never make it out—'
'There's no accounting for the public taste,' said Delicia, watching him with the pained consciousness of a sudden contempt. 'But you need not puzzle yourself over the matter.'
'Oh, I never bother my head over literature at all!' laughed Carlyon, becoming quite hilarious, now that he knew an extra four thousand pounds had been piled into his private banking account. 'People often ask me, "How does your wife manage to write such clever books?" And I always reply, "Don't know, never could tell. Astonishing woman! Shuts herself up in her own room like a silkworm, and spins a regular cocoon!" That's what I say, you know; yet nobody ever seems to believe me, and lots of fellows swear you must get a man to help you.'
'It is part of man's conceit to imagine his assistance always necessary,' said Delicia, coldly smiling. 'Considering how loudly men talk of their own extraordinary abilities, it is really astonishing how little they manage to do. Good-bye! I'm going upstairs to spin cocoons.'