This friend of Hugh's was much younger than himself, a fastidious and somewhat secluded nature, but possessing for Hugh the deep attraction of a peculiar type of character. He had great critical and literary gifts, and seemed to Hugh to bring to the judgment of artistic work an extraordinarily clear and fine criterion of values. But beside this, he seemed to Hugh to have the power of entering into a very close and emotional relationship with people; and out in the meadows where the sun shone bright, the breeze blew soft, and the first daisies showed their heads among the grass, Hugh asked him to explain what he felt about his relationship with others. His friend said that it came to this, that it was the only real and vital thing in the world; and when Hugh pressed him further, and asked him what he felt about the artistic life, his friend said that it was a great mystery, because art also seemed to him a strong, entrancing, fascinating thing; but that it ran counter to and cut across his relations with others, and seemed almost like a violent and distracting temptation, that tore him away from the more vital impulse. He added that the problem as to whether individuality endured (of which they had spoken earlier) seemed to him not to affect the question at all, any more than it affected one's sleep or appetite. At this, for a moment, a mist seemed to roll away from Hugh's eyes, though he knew that it would close in again, and for an instant he understood; to himself relations with others were but one class of beautiful experiences, like art, and music, and nature, and hints of the unseen; not differing in quality, but only in kind, from other experiences. Hugh saw too, in the same flash of insight, that what kept him from emotional relationships was a certain timidity--a dislike of anything painful or disturbing; and that the mistake he made, if that can be called a mistake which was so purely instinctive, was his desire to obliterate and annihilate all the unpleasing, painful, and disagreeable elements from all circumstances and situations. The reason why Hugh did not hunger and thirst after friendship was, he saw, that inconveniences, humours, misunderstandings, mannerisms, _entourage_, were all so many disagreeable incidents which interfered with his tranquillity of enjoyment. If he had really loved, these things would have weighed as nothing in comparison with the need of satisfying the desire of relationship; as it was, they weighed so much with Hugh that they overpowered the other instinct. It was really a sort of luxuriousness of temperament that intervened; and Hugh felt that for a man to say that he loved his friends, and yet to allow this fastidious sense of discomfort to prevent his seeing them, was as if a man said that he was devoted to music, and yet allowed the tumult of concert-rooms to prevent his ever going to hear music. And yet the language of friendship was so familiar, and the power of multiplying relations with