which he moved with so much surprise would
soon be changed to hostility. He could again see himself crossing the
yard; could hear himself called by Father Roberts--the master who had
told him of the expected new arrival--and his surprise when Lincoln
Maitland had given him the hearty handshake of one demi-compatriot
who meets another. He was to learn later that that reception was quite
natural, coming from the son of an Englishman, educated altogether by
his mother, and taken from New York to Europe before his fifth year,
there to live in a circle as little American as possible. Chapron did
not reason in that manner. He had an infinitely tender heart. Gratitude
entered it--gratitude as impassioned as had been his fear. One week
later Lincoln Maitland and he were friends, and friends so intimate that
they never parted.

The affection, which was merely to the indifferent nature of Maitland
a simple college episode, became to Florent the most serious, most
complete sentiment of his life. Those fraternities of election, the
loveliest and most delicate of the heart of man, usually dawn thus in
youth. It is the ideal age of passionate friendship, that period
between ten and sixteen, when the spirit is so pure, so fresh, still so
virtuous, so fertile in generous projects for the future. One dreams
of a companionship almost mystical with the friend from whom one has no
secret, whose character one sees in such a noble light, on whose esteem
one depends as upon the surest recompense, whom one innocently desires
to resemble. Indeed, they are, between the innocent lads who work side
by side on a problem of geometry or a lesson in history, veritable
poems of tenderness at which the man will smile later, finding so far
different from him in all his tastes, him whom he desired to have for
a brother. It happens, however, in certain natures of a sensibility
particularly precocious and faithful at the same time, that the
awakening of effective life is so strong, so encroaching, that the
impassioned friendship persists, first through the other awakening, that
of sensuality, so fatal to all the senses of delicacy, then through the
first tumult of social experience, not less fatal to our ideal of youth.

That was the case with Florent Chapron, whether his character, at once
somewhat wild and yet submissive, rendered him more qualified for that
renunciation of his personality than friendship demands, whether, far
from his father and his sis