THE WINDOWby a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and tobe communing already with a sky which beholdsan earth entirely at rest.

Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankesthought of Ramsay: thought of a road in West-morland, thought of Ramsay striding along aroad by himself hung round with that solitudewhich seemed to be his natural air. But this wassuddenly interrupted, William Bankes remem-bered (and this must refer to some actual incident),by a hen, straddling her wings out in protectionof a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay,stopping, pointed his stick and said “Pretty—pretty," an odd illumination into his heart,Bankes had thought it, which showed his sim-plicity, his sympathy with humble things; but itseemed to him as if their friendship had ceased,there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsayhad married. After that, what with one thing andanother, the pulp had gone out of their friendship.Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after atime, repetition had taken the place of newness.It was to repeat that they met. But in this dumbcolloquy with the sand dunes he maintained thathis affection for Ramsay had in no way dim-inished; but there, like the body of a youngman laid up in peat for a century, with the redfresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its37
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