Huntington passed an uncomfortable half hour after watching Merry and Cosden start off on their sailing-trip, and he was glad to have Edith Stevens break in upon his unprofitable self-communion. Cosden had put into words a fact which until then Huntington had stubbornly refused to acknowledge: he had actually reached a point where he heartily disapproved of his friend. Connie had said it, and the realization that what he said was true shook the long-established friendship to the core. As he analyzed the case Huntington found it difficult to explain why this complete change in conditions should suddenly have taken place. Cosden was no different from what he had been during all these years of their intimacy. In fact, he knew no one among his friends who was so absolutely consistent in conducting his life in accord with principles established before their friendship began. Others had commented on Cosden's commercial instincts, and Huntington always defended him, yet now these same traits caused him to criticise his friend even more severely than those whose attitude he had previously thought unwarranted. The change, then, Huntington concluded was in himself rather than in Cosden; and from this point he tried to discover what that change really was. What had their relations been during these years? They had never come together in any business way, and Huntington now for the first time wondered why it would not have been natural for Cosden to turn over to his office some of his frequent cases in litigation. It had not previously occurred to him that he might have expected it, but now he wondered. This in itself was evidence that his friend did not consider him seriously in the practice of his profession. The real fact was that they had played together, and that their intimacy had stopped at that point. Huntington now recalled that in gratifying those characteristics which found enjoyment in music, art or literature he instinctively sought the companionship of other friends, and the same analysis revealed to him that Cosden had done likewise in turning to other and more kindred spirits in living that part of his life with which his friend had little sympathy. It had all happened so naturally that Huntington had never realized until now that in spite of their intimacy there was a side to each man's life into which the other never entered.