regular. It was a period during which a new kind of intimacy began to
exist, as far removed from the half-serious, half-jesting intercourse of
earlier days as it was from the ultimate happiness to which all those
who love look forward with equal trust, although few ever come near it
and fewer still can ever reach it quite. It was outwardly a sort of
frank comradeship which took a vast deal for granted on both sides for
the mere sake of escaping analysis, a condition in which each understood
all that the other said, while neither quite knew what was in the
other's heart, a state in which both were pleased to dwell for a time,
as though preferring to prolong a sure if imperfect happiness rather
than risk one moment of it for the hope of winning a life-long joy. It
was a time during which mere friendship reached an artificially perfect
beauty, like a summer fruit grown under glass in winter, which in
thoroughly unnatural conditions attains a development almost impossible
even where unhelped nature is most kind. Both knew, perhaps, that it
could not last, but neither wished it checked, and neither liked to
think of the moment when it must either begin to wither by degrees, or
be suddenly absorbed into a greater and more dangerous growth.

At that time they were able to talk fluently upon the nature of the
human heart and the durability of great affections. They propounded the
problems of the world and discussed them between the selection of a
carpet and the purchase of a table. They were ready at any moment to
turn from the deepest conversation to the consideration of the merest
detail, conscious that they could instantly take up the thread of their
talk. They could separate the major proposition from the minor, and the
deduction from both, by a lively argument concerning the durability of a
stuff or the fitness of a piece of furniture, and they came back each
time with renewed and refreshed interest to the consideration of matters
little less grave than the resurrection of the dead and the life of the
world to come. That their conclusions were not always logical nor even
very sensible has little to do with the matter. On the contrary, the
discovery of a flaw in their own reasoning was itself a reason for
opening the question again at their next meeting.

At first their conversation was of general things, including the
desirability of glory for its own sake, the immortality of the soul and
the principles of architecture.