It is not possible for me to repeat the solemn words of that interview. We spoke of grave and sacred themes. He gave me great counsel and fine sympathy. He gave me affectionate rebuke and unfathomable resolve. We talked of those inner experiences which, on earth, the soul protects, like struggling flame, between itself and the sheltering hand of God. We spoke much of the Master, and of my poor hope that I might be permitted after I had been a long time in Heaven, to become worthy to see Him, though at the vast distance of my unworthiness. Of that unworthiness too, we spoke most earnestly; while we did so, the sense of it grew within me like a new soul; yet so divinely did my friend extend his tenderness to me, that I was strengthened far more than weakened by these finer perceptions of my unfitness, which he himself had aroused in me. The counsel that he gave me, Eternity could not divert out of my memory, and the comfort which I had from him I treasure to this hour. “Here,” I thought, “here, at last, I find reproof as gentle as sympathy, and sympathy as invigorating as reproof. Now, for the first time in all my life, I find myself truly understood. What could I not become if I possessed the friendship of such a being! How shall I develop myself so as to obtain it? How can I endure to be deprived of it? Is this too, like friendship on earth, a snatch, a compromise, a heart-ache, a mirror in which one looks only long enough to know that it is dashed away? Have I begun that old pain again, _here_?” For I knew, as I sat in that solemn hour with my face to the sea and my soul with him, while sweeter than any song of all the waves of Heaven or earth to sea-lovers sounded his voice who did commune with me,--verily I knew, for then and forever, that earth had been a void to me because I had him not, and that Heaven could be no Heaven to me without him. All which I had known of human love; all that I had missed; the dreams from which I had been startled; the hopes that had evaded me; the patience which comes from knowing that one may not even try not to be misunderstood; the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the anticipation of desolate age which casts its shadow backward upon the dial of middle life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its disuse; the distrust of one’s own atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable; the growing difficulty of explaining oneself even when it is necessary, because no one being more than any other cares for the explanation; the things which a lonely life converts into silence that cannot be broken, swept upon me like rapids, as, turning to look into his dazzling face, I said: “This--_all_ this he understands.”