Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/388

 fibre; and their respect for each other, their dread of being repudiated, of losing the first friendship which each feels for the other, make them wear the mask, day by day, until finally it is thrown away, first by one, then by the other. From this tale, are appropriate in this literary connection two excerpts. The first summarizes the quality of the immediate and close friendship between the two young men; which presently pulsates inevitably to a warmer and more physical sentiment:

"Now of what did two men thus insistent on one another's companionship, one of them some twenty-five years of age, the other past thirty, neither of them vaporous with the vague enthusiasms of first manhood, nor fluent with the mere sentimentalities of idealism … of what did we talk, hour in and hour out, that our company was so welcome to each other, even to the point of our being indifferent to all the rest of our friends roundabout?… centering ourselves on the time together as the best thing in the world for us Such a question repeats a common mistake, to begin with. For it presupposes that companionship is a sort of endless conversazione, a State-Council ever in session. Instead, the silences in intimacy stand for the most perfect mutuality. And, besides, no man or woman has yet ciphered out the real secret of the finest quality, clearest sense, pf human companionability—a thing that often grows up, flower and fruit, so swiftly as to be like the oriental juggler's magic mango-plant. We are likely to set ourselves to analyzing, over and over, the externals and accidence … the mere inflections of friendships, as it were. But the real secret evades us. It ever will evade. We are drawn together because we are drawn. We are content to abide together just because we are content. We feel that we have reached a certain harbour, after much or little drifting, just because it is for that haven, after all, that we have been moving on and on; with all the irresistible pilotry of the wide ocean-wash friendly to us. It is as foolish to make too much of the definite in friendship as it is in love—which is the highest expression of companionship. Friendship?—love? what are they, if real on both sides, but the great Findings?…

As a fact, my new friend and I had an interesting range of commonplace and practical topics, on! which to exchange ideas. Sentimentalities were quite in abeyance. We were both interested in art, as well as in sundry of the less popular branches of literature, and in what scientifically underlies practical life. Moreover,