Tell me this: before you lost him that last summer over the
crevasse, had you begun to tire of him? Was there anything in you that
began to draw back from anything in him? As you now look back at the
friendship of your youth, have the years lessened your regret for
him?"
He answered out of the ideals of his youth:
"The longer I knew him, the more I loved him. I never tired of being
with him. Nothing in me ever drew back from anything in him. When he
was lost, the whole world lost some of its strength and
nobility. After all the years, if he could come back, he would find me
unchanged--that friend of my youth!"
With a peculiar change of voice she asked next:
"The doctor, Herbert and Elsie's father, our nearest neighbor, your
closest friend now in middle life. You see a great deal of the doctor;
he is often here, and you and he often sit up late at night, talking
with one another about many things: do you ever tire of the doctor and
wish him away? Have you any feeling toward him that you try to keep
secret from me? Can you be a perfectly frank man with this friend of
your middle life?"
"The longer I know him the more I like him, honor him, trust him. I
never tire of his companionship or his conversation; I have no
disguises with him and need none.
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