Edith was not of the women who naturally analyze their own feelings
toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without
sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to
allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which
produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the
"_Journal Intime_" which it is impossible to read without blushing that
one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small
chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her
mental attitude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of
the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of
that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship
other than such as must come from lack of intercourse.
Perhaps some train of thought not far removed from the foregoing made
her say, as the luncheon progressed,--
"Really, it seems to me as if life proceeded at a pace so rapid
nowadays that one had not time even to be fond of anybody."
"It goes too fast for one to have much chance to show it," Helen
responded; "but one may surely be fond of one's friends, even without
seeing them."
"If you will swear not to tell the disgraceful fact," Mrs. Frostwinch
said, "I'll confess that I abhor Walt Whitman; but that one dreadful,
disreputably slangy phrase of his, 'I loaf and invite my soul,' echoes
through my brain like an invitation to Paradise.
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