to return again and again with renewed relish to the central theme.
Such talks as these, with no overshadowing anxiety upon the mind,
held on breezy uplands or in pleasant country lanes, make the
moments, indeed, to which the mind, in the sad mood which remembers
the days that are gone, turns with that sorrowful desolation of
which Dante speaks, as to a treasure lightly spent and ungratefully
regarded. How such hours rise up before the mind! Even now as I
write I think of such a scene, when I walked with a friend, long
dead, on the broad yellow sands beside a western sea. I can recall
the sharp hiss of the shoreward wind, the wholesome savours of the
brine, the soft clap of small waves, the sand-dunes behind the
shore, pricked with green tufts of grass, the ships moving slowly
on the sea's rim, and the shadowy headland to which we hardly
seemed to draw more near, while we spoke of all that was in our
hearts, and all that we meant to do and be. That day was a great
gift from God; and yet, as I received it, I did not know how fair a
jewel of memory it would be. I like to think that there are many
such jewels of recollection clasped close in the heart's casket,
even in the minds of men and women that I meet, that seem so
commonplace to me, so interesting to themselves!

It is strange, in reflecting about the memorable talks I have held
with different people, to find that I remember best the talks that
I have had with men, rather than with women. There is a kind of
simple openness, an equal comradeship in talks with men, which I
find it difficult to attain in the case of women. I suppose that
some unsuspected mystery of sex creeps in, and that with women
there is a whole range of experiences and emotions that one does
not share, so that there is an invisible and intangible barrier
erected between the two minds. I feel, too, in talking with women,