"But all the same, I don't agree with you.

I think it's the only thing worth doing." "Why do you say that ?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.
"Why ?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind.

"Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die otherwise." A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of her mind were subdued; and she looked at him ironically and with the expression which he had called sad before, for want of a better name for it.
"I don't know that there's much sense in having ideals," she said.
"But you have them," he replied energetically.

"Why do we call them ideals?
It's a stupid word.

Dreams, I mean--" She followed his words with parted lips, as though to answer eagerly when he had done; but as he said, "Dreams, I mean," the door of the drawing-room swung open, and so remained for a perceptible instant.