"I neither seek nor find friends," he answered bluntly. "I have some slight acquaintance with these people which they do not discourage because it is profitable to them. I do not understand disinterested friendship. I do not believe in it." "Which is to say you have never felt a disinterested friendship for any one," she said. "You don't know what you miss." "In that case, I miss nothing," he replied. "One has to be conscious of a need in order to appreciate its absence. Life is a huge business of bluff. A few persons only remain sincere because they will not take the trouble to pose. To be sincere is to become unpopular. But unpopularity is less irksome than maintaining a pose of sociability. I believe there are very few people who honestly love their kind." "That is too cynical a belief to be worth discussing," she said, pausing with the half eaten fruit in her hand to look at him with puzzled eyes. He seemed amused rather than vexed at her answer, and smoked for a moment reflectively before resuming the talk. "I doubt whether you are quite sincere in making that assertion," he contended. "It is an easy way of disposing of a subject which one feels unequal to combat in argument. Friendship is mere sentiment, so is love of one's fellows; let either interfere with self-interest, and what becomes of it? It is only with a few rare souls that altruism becomes a workable theory." "So long as there are a few souls great enough for disinterested love," she said quietly, "there is a little light of hope in the world." She got up and threw away the remains of the apple as though her pleasure in the fruit were spoiled. She hated this cynical bitter talk; at the moment she almost hated the speaker. Because of his own wasted life, his morbid views and perverted ideals, he was trying to poison her mind with the hopeless doctrine of his deliberate self-deception. There was something mean in her opinion in this wilful attempt to darken the world for others. "Let us go on," she said. "Active exercise puts you in a better mood. I do not like your ideas. I'm sorry; but I don't wish to listen to them." "No one likes my ideas," he answered, rising. "I don't like them myself. Truth is rarely agreeable; that is why so many people affect lies. I think we had better turn and see about breakfast. Your lack of patience suggests to me that you are hungry." She broke into a laugh. At the sound of her mirth his face cleared immediately; he stood still in the road and looked at her curiously. "I am glad that the sun still shines," he said, and started again to walk along the uphill path.