Soon after I had left England he threw up journalism, travelled, then did some political private-secretarial work and so forth, and as relation after relation died and left him money he gradually became a connoisseur of life and nothing else, and settled down in Gray's Inn, permanently, with his floating population of fifty pairs of perfect trousers, a profile glass, and an invaluable man. In Buenos Ayres I had written to Trist now and then, and he to me: enough to inform each other that the end was not yet, but little more. I continued to put off the call as long as I could. There is something very perilous in the resumption of intercourse after many years, especially when the man you are going to see was once your hero. Heroes do not wear well, and it is a question whether they are less heroic to their valets who see them continually or to old admirers who have acquired thirty years of experience since they saw them last. I was going, I felt, to see Trist with very clear eyes, and I did not want to. I am absurdly fond of the past. Few friendships, I suppose, wear honestly through a long life. The friends do not progress equally; one matures quickly, the other slowly. One becomes pious, the other impious. They marry (this is the commonest interruption of all) antipathetic wives. It is all as it should be if they were really friends once, for friends, in fact, belong to periods rather than to all time, although sentiment would have it otherwise. One is always changing a little, although of radical change there is almost none, and new friends are found in tune with each stage. I could admit no longer any need for Trist, and yet all the same I longed to see him and dreaded it too. There was another obstacle in the way. We were both bachelors. In every man, I take it, even the most married, there sleeps a bachelor; but a bachelor through and through as I have been, and as Trist is, is a less negotiable quantity. No one probably has more affectionate impulses than I,--a warmer wish to help and comfort,--and yet I am always conscious of a slight barrier between me and those I would befriend and assist, a barrier which probably would not be there had I married. Marriage, there is no doubt, is a solvent; and the curious thing is that the married reveal their state: marconigrams pass. Bachelors have many advantages, but they are all minor. Perhaps the greatest advantage they enjoy is that of still being able to follow an impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them all the pleasure that it would give many a man who has tasted restriction. Feeding on impulses can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll.