[Many of his fellow-countrymen despise the French for their tendency to believe themselves superior in all things, but Henry actually enjoys it. Not least because on more than a few points, he agrees with them. He smiles at Grantaire's pronouncement; it gives him nearly as much pleasure as less verbal activity does.]

It is not in me to be reckless except when to be so is the least necessary. It was no one thing; rather an accretion of details. I might have been on my way after giving you a cigarette but, perhaps, for the way you took pleasure in it, or the way you spoke of influence. [He extinguishes the remains of his own cigarette.] Romanticism has its charms, my dear fellow, but when it has left one with the taste of dust in one's mouth, the only remedy of the elixir of cynicism, and more than anything else, that is what I seek.

[It's as close as Henry will ever get to admitting to how wounded the conversation with Dorian left him, and he's admitting it to Grantaire, a stranger, here in an alley. It is indeed as close to raw as Henry has ever gotten, though even now he guards himself with his epigrams and aphorisms. He needs to keep these about him, if nothing else.]