"We must have our women in heaven, else what is heaven for ?" "I do not like your heaven," she said.

"It is a mad place, a beast place, a place of frost and storm and fury." "And your heaven ?" I questioned.
"Is always unending summer, with the year at the ripe for the fruits and flowers and growing things." I shook my head and growled: "I do not like your heaven.

It is a sad place, a soft place, a place for weaklings and eunuchs and fat, sobbing shadows of men." My remarks must have glamoured her mind, for her eyes continued to sparkle, and mine was half a guess that she was leading me on.
"My heaven," she said, "is the abode of the blest." "Valhalla is the abode of the blest," I asserted.

"For look you, who cares for flowers where flowers always are?
in my country, after the iron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the first blossoms twinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy, and we look, and look again.
"And fire!" I cried out.

"Great glorious fire! A fine heaven yours where a man cannot properly esteem a roaring fire under a tight roof with wind and snow a-drive outside." "A simple folk, you," she was back at me.