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41 ers now than they had been when they married a year before. There were no reserves in their talk. Both were of the world, with an experimental interest in life. Teresa's interest was at times the paler, perhaps for reasons of physical vitality, for she came of an old and rather tired stock; but at times also it was more intense than Basil's. He was younger in race and in temperament, full of vigour, and where Teresa questioned and doubted he went straight on; but he took life, not emotionally as Teresa did, but with a cool vision that sought beauty. His mind desired the closest contact with reality, and he desired the same mental experience for Teresa. He wanted her to know the world as nearly as possibly as he knew it, to see it as he saw it. He enjoyed a masculine intimacy of talk with her. He said to her in effect, in the phrase of Sainte-Beuve: "C'est toujours du plus près possible qu'il faut regarder les hommes et les choses." And he unrolled to her a vivid picture of the physical, mental, moral life of a man which by turns amused, saddened, revolted, but always fascinated her. The characters of many men, of many women, come into the story; the men intimately known, the women generally superficially and in a single light aspect. Basil's keen interest in human beings, joined to an attractive personality, had produced the rich harvest of reminiscences which he offered up to Ter-