For days and weeks I was harassed by such thoughts; and it was to be long before I had wholly recovered. Meanwhile, however, I was partially consoled by the companionship of Xanocles. The friendship begun at our first meeting, was strengthening and solidifying in the course of the months; the proximity of our lodgings rendered it easy for us to see one another, but there also seemed to be a certain proximity of mind, which made each of us take pleasure in the company of the other; and in spite of the gulf of race, training and experience, we found that we actually had more in common than many persons who have spent all their lives in the same home. And so he would often seek me out, and we would spend hours exchanging ideas in the dim seclusion of my rooms; and often I would seek him out, and we would hold friendly debate in the quiet of his rooms; and not infrequently we might have been seen strolling arm in arm about the city, while I pictured to him the wonders and vastness of the upper world, or while he in his turn regaled me with colorful reminiscences, and told how he was employed by the State as a binder and designer of books, but how he spent his spare time in writing economic and philosophical treatises or delivering lectures in favor of the Emergence. It was under the pilotage of Xanocles that I was introduced to the social life of Atlantis. The Atlanteans did not spend all their time in grave and serious pursuits, as I had at first imagined; they did not devote themselves to art until it palled upon them, or seek for beauty until it became blurred and illusory; but they knew how to vary their lives and make them symmetrical, and they had quite as much time for laughter and recreation as for earnest endeavor and sober thought. Indeed, they proved to be an unusually sociable people; and after I had entered with Xanocles into the rare spirit of their life and pastimes, I was forced to conclude that a prime reason for the success of Atlantean society was the sane balance it preserved, and the fact that its more ideal aims were tempered by a recognition and a measured encouragement of all the normal inclinations of man. * * * * *