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396 dependent nature; and what we perceive in his correspondent's reserve—her reluctance, in common phrase to make herself cheap—is the natural effort to preserve a certain ideal dignity in her own eyes. "Each time we meet," he declares, in 1843, "it seems as if there were a new formation of ice to break through. Why don't I find you the same as I left you? If we met oftener, this wouldn't happen. I am like an old opera for you, which you need to forget to hear it again with any pleasure." He numbers this annoying self-possession, apparently, among the machinations of what he calls her "infernal coquetry." His conception of the feminine character, though it had sunk a deep shaft in a single direction, was strikingly narrow. In the later letters, where he appears altogether in his dressing-gown and slippers, he is for ever berating his old friend for her "prudery." He can think of no other name for the superficiality of her investigation of certain points of harem-life, during a sojourn in Algiers; and he showers the same accusation upon her when, on his having lent her books unfamiliar to most women, she alludes to their peculiar character in returning them. One is anxious to know where he drew the line between "prudery" and modesty, or whether he really thought the distinction not worth making. And yet it was not that his friendship had not a masculine delicacy of its