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.