“Might he come?” he persisted.

“Of course I said he could come, and he came, but I never saw him.

“The next time we met he told me all about it; how he had picked you out from my description of you, and how he knew Baueer from his likeness to Dumas pere, and he was delightful about it all.

“Now, Frank, would any girl have come to see you enjoying yourself with other people?  Would any girl have stared through the window and been glad to see you inside amusing yourself with other men and women?  You know there’s not a girl on earth with such unselfish devotion.  There is no comparison, I tell you, between the boy and the girl; I say again deliberately, you don’t know what a great romantic passion is or the high unselfishness of true love.”

“You have put it with extraordinary ability,” I said, “as of course I knew you would.  I think I can understand the charm of such companionship; but only from the young boy’s point of view, not from yours.  I can understand how you have opened to him a new heaven and a new earth, but what has he given you?  Nothing.  On the other hand any finely gifted girl would have given you something.  If you had really touched her heart, you would have found in her some instinctive tenderness, some proof of unselfish, exquisite devotion that would have made your eyes prickle with a sense of inferiority.

“After all, the essence of love, the finest spirit of that companionship you speak about, of the sisterhood of soul, is that the other person should quicken you, too; open to you new horizons, discover new possibilities; and how could your soldier boy help you in any way?  He brought you no new ideas, no new feelings, could reveal no new thoughts to you.  I can see no romance, no growth of soul in such a connection.  But the girl is different from the man in all ways.  You have as much to learn from her as she has from you, and neither of you can come to ideal growth in any other way:  you are both half-parts of humanity—­complements, and in need of each other.”

“You have put it very cunningly, Frank, as I expected you would, to return your compliment, but you must admit that with the boy, at any rate, you have no jealousy, no mean envyings, no silly inanities.  There it is, Frank, some of us hate ‘cats.’  I can give reasons for my dislike, which to me are conclusive.”

“The boy who would beg for a bicycle is not likely to be without mean envyings,” I replied.  “Now you have talked about romance and companionship,” I went on, “but can you really feel passion?”

“Frank, what a silly question!  Do you remember how Socrates says he felt when the chlamys blew aside and showed him the limbs of Charmides?  Don’t you remember how the blood throbbed in his veins and how he grew blind with desire, a scene more magical than the passionate love-lines of Sappho?