_Constantius._ And do you mean that you really didn’t enjoy it?
_Pulcheria._ I found it protracted, pretentious, pedantic.
_Constantius._ I see; I can understand that.
_Theodora._ Oh, you understand too much! This is the twentieth time you have used that formula.
_Constantius._ What will you have? You know I must try to understand; it’s my trade.
_Theodora._ He means he writes reviews. Trying not to understand is what I call that trade!
_Constantius._ Say then I take it the wrong way; that is why it has never made my fortune. But I do try to understand; it is my--my--(He pauses.)
_Theodora._ I know what you want to say. Your strong side.
_Constantius._ I have written _one_. You can’t call that a side. It’s a little facet, at the most.
_Pulcheria._ You talk as if you were a diamond. I should like to read it--not aloud!
_Constantius._ You can’t read it softly enough. But you, Theodora, you didn’t find our book too “protracted”?
_Theodora._ I should have liked it to continue indefinitely, to keep coming out always, to be one of the regular things of life.
_Pulcheria._ Oh, come here, little dog! To think that _Daniel Deronda_ might be perpetual when you, little short-nosed darling, can’t last at the most more than nine or ten years!
_Theodora._ A book like _Daniel Deronda_ becomes part of one’s life; one lives in it, or alongside of it. I don’t hesitate to say that I have been living in this one for the last eight months. It is such a complete world George Eliot builds up; it is so vast, so much-embracing! It has such a firm earth and such an ethereal sky. You can turn into it and lose yourself in it.
_Pulcheria._ Oh, easily, and die of cold and starvation!
_Theodora._ I have been very near to poor Gwendolen and very near to that sweet Mirah. And the dear little Meyricks also; I know them intimately well.
_Pulcheria._ The Meyricks, I grant you, are the best thing in the book.
_Theodora._ They are a delicious family; I wish they lived in Boston. I consider Herr Klesmer almost Shakespearean, and his wife is almost as good. I have been near to poor grand Mordecai----
_Pulcheria._ Oh, reflect, my dear; not too near!
_Theodora._ And as for Deronda himself I freely confess that I am consumed with a hopeless passion for him. He is the most irresistible man in the literature of fiction.