"I always thought," she said to him one day, "that grave and thoughtful people always despised romance."
"They despise all affectation and caricature of it," he replied.
"Since I have been out in the world and have listened to people talking, I have heard them say, 'Oh, she is romantic!' as though romance were wrong or foolish."
"There is romance and romance," he said; "romance that is noble, beautiful and exalting; and romance that is the overheated sentiment of foolish girls. What so romantic as Shakespeare? What love he paints for us—what passion, what sadness! Who more romantic than Fouque? What wild stories, what graceful, improbable legends he gives us! Yet, who sneers at Shakespeare and Fouque?"
"Then why do people apply the word 'romantic' almost as a term of reproach to others?"
"Because they misapply the word, and do not understand it. I plead guilty myself to a most passionate love of romance—that is, romance which teaches, elevates, and ennobles—the soul of poetry, the high and noble faculty that teaches one to appreciate the beautiful and true. You know, Hyacinth, there are true romance and false romance, just as there are true poetry and false poetry."
"I can understand what you call true romance, but not what you mean by false," she said.
"No; you are too much like the flower you are named after to know much of false romance," he rejoined. "Everything that lowers one's standard, that tends to lower one's thoughts, that puts mere sentiment in the place of duty, that makes wrong seem right, that leads to underhand actions, to deceit, to folly—all that is false romance. Pardon my alluding to such things. The lover who would persuade a girl to deceive her friends for his sake, who would persuade her to give him private meetings, to receive secret letters—such a lover starts from a base of the very falsest romance; yet many people think it true."
He did not notice that her beautiful face had suddenly grown pale, and that an expression of fear had crept into her blue eyes.
"You are always luring me into argument, Hyacinth," he said, with a smile.