"I fancy you are very wrong," said the actress, pressing her pretty
fingers to her forehead, as if to understand him; "but I cannot tell you
why, and I never argue. I ramble on in my odd way, casting out my shrewd
things without defending them if any one chooses to quarrel with them.
What I do I let others do. My maxim in talk is my maxim in life. I claim
liberty for myself, and give indulgence to others."

"I see," said Godolphin, "that you have plenty of books about you, though
you plead not guilty to reading. Do you learn your philosophy from them?
for I think you have contracted a vein of reflection since we parted which
I scarcely recognise as an old characteristic."

"Why," answered Fanny, "though I don't read, I skim. Sometimes I canter
through a dozen novels in a morning. I am disappointed, I confess, in all
these works; I want to see more real knowledge of the world than they ever
display. They tell us how Lord Arthur looked, and Lady Lucy dressed, and
what was the colour of those curtains, and these eyes, and so forth; and
then the better sort, perhaps, do also tell us what the heroine felt as
well as wore, and try with might and main to pull some string of the
internal machine; but still I am not enlightened, not touched. I don't
recognise men and women; they are puppets with holiday phrases: and I tell
you what, Percy, these novelists make the last mistake you would suppose
them guilty of; they have not romance enough in them to paint the truths
of society. Old gentlemen say novels are bad teachers of life, because
they make it too ideal; quite the reverse: novels are too trite! too
superficial! Their very talk about love, and the fuss they make about it,
show how shallow real romance is with them; for they say nothing new on
it, and real romance is for ever striking out new thoughts. Am I not
right, Percy?--No! life, be it worldly as it may, has a vast deal of
romance in it. Every one of us (even poor I) have a mine of thoughts, and