“But one can imagine, even if one doesn’t know.”
There was an indescribable spirit and impulse under these words which made the young man look at her curiously.
“Yes, yes, but imagination is not of much value unless it has something to go upon. It is of no more value than a painting done by a man who had never seen anything but his paint-box. You must study Nature, copy Nature, before your imagination is of any use to you!”
“Ah! Now you go too far,” cried she, warmly, “for it is of use, even if it only serves to make the world look more pleasant than it really is.”
“I don’t call that a use, I call it a danger,” said Bayre, now quite as warm as she in his argument. “Supposing, for instance, you start by endowing with all the gifts of your imagination some commonplace person whom, upon that and that alone, you resolve to marry, would your imagination be strong enough, do you think, to enable you to gild your bargain to the end?”
She blushed a rosy red and looked at him half angrily, half mischievously, with a quick glance.
“Is a man the worse for being commonplace?” she asked. “And is it likely that I, who, as you say, know nothing of the world and the people in it, should ever be able to start on a voyage of discovery in search of the man that isn’t commonplace?”
Bayre laughed. And he thought, rather guiltily, of his own avowed ideals, which were very much the same as hers. And at the same moment it flashed through his mind that these same ideals were unsatisfying in his case; it followed, therefore, that they must be proved to be so in her case also.
“Look here,” said he, “I’m not going to dispute that many high qualities, or let us say many serviceable qualities, may be found in those people whom it’s usual to call commonplace, people with no imagination, no ideas; but you, with your romantic tendencies—”
“How do you know I have romantic tendencies?”