"What the devil do you mean?"
"I mean what you mean when you say a woman isn't honest. As you've so often remarked, there's such a thing as intellectual chastity. Some people have it, and some have not. You have it, my dear Rickets, in perfection, not to say excess; but most of us manage to lose it more or less as we go on. It's a deuced hard thing, I can tell you, for any editor to keep; and Jewdwine, I'm afraid, has latterly been induced to part with it to a considerable, a very considerable extent. It's a thousand pities; for Jewdwine had the makings in him of a really fine critic. He might have been a classic if he'd died soon enough."
"He is a classic—he's the only man whose opinion's really worth having at this moment."
"Whom are we talking about? Jewdwine? Or the editor of Metropolis?"
"I'm talking about Jewdwine. I happen to know him, if you don't."
"And I'm talking about the other fellow whom you don't happen to know a little bit. Nobody cares a tuppenny damn about his opinion, except the fools who read it and the knaves who buy it."
"And who do you imagine those people are?"
"Most of them are publishers, I believe. But a good few are authors, I regret to say."
"Authors have cheek enough for most things; but I should like to see one suggesting to Jewdwine that he should sell him his opinion."
"My dear fellow, anybody may suggest it. That's what he's there for, since he turned his opinion on to the streets. Whether you get a pretty opinion or not depends on the length of your purse."