'That's it! Mr Wegg, I'm thirty-two, and a bachelor.

Mr Wegg, I love her.

Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by a Potentate!' Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus's springing to his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying, with the calmness of despair, 'She objects to the business.' 'Does she know the profits of it ?' 'She knows the profits of it, but she don't appreciate the art of it, and she objects to it.

"I do not wish," she writes in her own handwriting, "to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light".' Mr Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of the deepest desolation.
'And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr Wegg, only to see that there's no look-out when he's up there! I sit here of a night surrounded by the lovely trophies of my art, and what have they done for me?
Ruined me.

Brought me to the pass of being informed that "she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light"!' Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so.
'It lowers me.