nd he
was, at the bottom of his heart, very glad to think he did know better.

Without making any pretense of being in love with her, he had come to
depend on her being in love with him. It had grown so pleasing to count
on her loyalty to him that a change in her feelings would have been
a disagreeable surprise. Getting something for nothing is a mode of
acquisition particularly pleasing to mankind, and he was enjoying
in some respects the position of an engaged man without any of the
responsibilities.

But if in some respects he was in the position of an engaged man, in
others he was farther from it than the average unengaged man. For while
Maud and he talked of almost everything else under heaven, the subject
of love was tabooed between them. Once for all Maud had said her say on
that point, and Arthur could say nothing unless he said as much as she
had said. For the same reason, there was never any approach to flirting
between them. Any trifling of that sort would have been meaningless
in an intimacy begun, as theirs had been, at a point beyond where most
flirtations end.

Not only in this respect, but also in the singular frankness which
marked their interchange of thought and opinion, was there something in
their relation savoring of that of brother and sister. It was as if her
confession of love had swept away by one breath the whole lattice of
conventional affectations through which young men and women usually talk
with each other. Once for all she had dropped her guard with him, and
he could not do less with her. He found himself before long talking more
freely to her than to any others of his acquaintance, and about more
serious matters. They talked of their deepest beliefs and convictions,
and he told her things that he had never told any one before. Why
should he not tell her his secrets? Had she not told him hers? It was a
pleasure to reciprocate her confidence if he could not her love. He had
not supposed it to be possible for a man to become so closely acquainted
with a young lady not a relative. It came to the point finally that when
they met in company, the few words that he might chance to exchange with
her were pitched in a different key from that used with the others, such
as one drops into when greeting a relative or familiar friend met in a
throng of strangers.

Of course, all this had not come at once. It was in winter that the
events took place with which this narrative opened. Winter had mean