He did not want to argue, or to hunt an idea to death;
and we had the supreme delight of long silences, during which our
thoughts led us to the same point, the truest test that there is
some subtle electrical affinity at work, moving viewlessly between
heart and brain.
What no doubt heightened the pleasure for me was that I had been
passing through a somewhat dreary period. Things had been going
wrong, had tied themselves into knots. Several people whose
fortunes had been bound up with my own had been acting perversely
and unreasonably--at least I chose to think so. My own work had
come to a standstill. I had pushed on perhaps too fast, and I had
got into a bare sort of moorland tract of life, and could not
discern the path in the heather. There did not seem any particular
task for me to undertake; the people whom it was my business to
help, if I could, seemed unaccountably and aggravatingly prosperous
and independent. Not only did no one seem to want my opinion, but I
did not feel that I had any opinions worth delivering.
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