“I haven’t changed, Amory, really—really I haven’t,” he protested.
“You have, Cosimo,” Amory replied, her head critically a little on one side. “You mayn’t know it, but you’re becoming—ordinary.”
“Oh!” Cosimo broke out, revolted. “Ordinary—Cosimo!——”
“I’m not reproaching you,” Amory continued. “I suppose that if you examine it, it’s nothing to be ashamed of—I mean that ‘ashamed’ isn’t quite the word. But words are only symbols after all; it’s the thing that matters.”
“Of course,” Cosimo agreed quickly. “You don’t think I’ve changed my mind about that, I hope, Amory? We came to the conclusion that words were only symbols years ago.”
But again Amory made her tender little appeal. Her fingers touched Cosimo’s hand lightly for a moment.
“Won’t you tell me, Cosimo? You see, it’s purely a matter of our intellectual identity. That’s been such a beautiful thing. Hasn’t it been a beautiful thing?” The fingers rested on his hand.
“Don’t say ‘been,’ Amory—it is,” Cosimo interrupted.
“Such a precious thing. Isn’t it Emerson who says that at bottom all friendship is based on equality of intellectual understanding? It’s a mingling of minds, Cosimo. When we use the same words we mean the same things by them, and—oh, how rare that is! Of course, I know your uncle’s dead, and that may have upset you, and you’ve all sorts of business about property and so on on your mind, but I can’t believe that accounts for all of it. I know you too well, you see! Or is it”—she gave a little start, as at a quite new surmise—“I don’t believe it can be, but is it—that you find me changed?”
Cosimo protested that Amory had not changed in the least. Neither of them had changed. A person might change from prejudice and intolerance to the larger view, but nobody in their senses thought of changing back again.