the room where you are
waiting: a picture which you might have chosen yourself, books which you
know and like, things which look as if your own hand had arranged them.
And you forget everything. With your forehead against the pane, you look
at the roofs of the houses, at the streets, at all that little scene
which is the constant companion of an existence which you do not know
and with which you are about to come into touch; and your heart beats
very fast, for a sort of foresight tells you that a friend is going to
enter the room."

"That's quite true; and sometimes even we have already met him at some
house or other; but then his mind displayed itself in a special
attitude, inaccessible, motionless, lifeless, like a thing in a glass
case. Now, we see him before us, in his own surroundings; and everything
is changed. He has a smile which is made of just the same quality of
affection as our own, a look instinct with the same sort of experience,
a laugh that cheerfully faces like dangers, a mind responding to the
same springs. And we talk and are contented and happy; and, when the sun
enters at the window or when the fire flickers merrily in the hearth, we
can easily picture spending the rest of our life there, in gladness and
comfort. Anything that the one says is received by the other with an
exclamation of delight. Yes, we have felt and seen things in the same
way; and this little fact, natural though it may seem, is so rare that
it appears extraordinary!"

With an abrupt movement that must be customary with him, my companion
shook his head to fling back his thick hair, which darkened his forehead
whenever he leant forward:

"And very often," he said, "you don't see each other again, or at least
you don't see each other like that, because time is too swift and
because everybody has to go his own road."

The bright shaft of sunlight was still between us. It came now from a
higher point of the little window. In the shimmering dust, I conjured up
the faces of scarce-seen friends. There were some whose features had
become almost obliterated; but beyond them, as one sees an image in a
crystal, I clearly perceived the ideas, the life, the soul that had for
a moment throbbed on exactly the same level as my own.

I replied, in a very low voice:

"We remain infinitely grateful to people who have given us such minutes
as those!"

And then, certain of hearing myself echoed, I cried, delightedly:

"Egoists should always