E. (a little embarrassed by his manner, aside). Can it be that he does not wish our relations to be impersonal? Of course not! (Aloud.) Yes, I know. Very impersonal indeed. I was thinking the same thing before you came.
H. (aside). Yes, and I was thinking the same thing before I came. We haven’t either of us gotten on much. (Aloud.) I was always an exacting sort of fellow, you know, so you will not be surprised at my coming to get a reception on my own account.
E. (aside). I should think I did know. (Aloud.) No, I am not surprised. (A moment’s pause—with a slight effort.) So you are an exacting sort of fellow still? I am looking for the changes of four years, you see.
H. (significantly). You may not find many, after all (Somewhat gloomily.) The rose-color wears off one’s glasses somewhat in four years, to be sure, but I don’t think the perspective changes much.
E. Don’t you? It strikes me that time reverses the glasses—that we find ourselves suddenly looking through the other end, and things that once were so large are a long way off, and have become extremely small.
H. (aside). Which means, I suppose, that I have taken a back seat, and must keep at opera-glass distance. (Aloud.) Things have no importance of their own, then? I suppose it is a good deal a matter of which way you look at it.
E. Yes, education does everything for us—which is something of a platitude. But I am sorry about the rose-color. I’d much rather you should look at me through tinted glasses. I said the other day to a confidential friend that my complexion is no longer what it was.
H. (refusing to be diverted). No, I do not think one’s views of persons change—or perhaps I should say one’s attitude toward persons—as do those of abstractions. One does not expect to find truth—trust—honor—love, growing so large.
E. (soberly). In other words, truth is a hot-house, and one’s ideas are tropical. Well, it is perhaps as well to come out into the open air, even if things do seem a little—stunted—at first.
H. Undoubtedly. Yet the comfort of the human frame demands something in the way of a temperate zone between. A sudden plunge into the arctic regions is apt to convey a chill—quite a serious one sometimes.