which his sponsors gave him,--why we are still good friends and always
will be, I suppose. But we are not particularly intimate; and very
certainly we will never again read _Chastelard_ together and declaim
the more impassioned parts of it,--and in fine, I cannot help seeing,
nowadays, that, especially since his marriage, Billy has developed
into a rather obvious and stupid person, and that he considers me to
be a bit of a bad egg. And in a phrase, when we are together, just we
two, we smoke a great deal and do not talk any more than is necessary.

And once I would have quite sincerely enjoyed any death, however
excruciating, which promoted the well-being of Billy Woods; and he
viewed me not dissimilarly, I believe.... However, after all, this was
a long, long while ago, and in a period almost antediluvian.

And during this period they of Fairhaven assumed I was in love with
Bettie Hamlyn; and for a very little while, at the beginning, had I
assumed as much. More lately was my error flagrantly apparent when I
fell in love with someone else, and sincerely in love, and found to my
amazement that, upon the whole, I preferred Bettie's companionship to
that of the woman I adored. By and by, though, I learned to accept
this odd, continuing phenomenon much as I had learned to accept the
sunrise.


3

Once Bettie demanded of me, "I often wonder what you really think of
me? Honest injun, I mean."

I meditated, and presently began, with leisure: