Have you never heard of pious Catholics who cherish a devotion to some long-departed saint?
That is my feeling towards Artemidorus, and if you only knew what comfort he has shed into the heart of a lonely woman; what a quiet, unobtrusive friend he has been to me in my solitary, friendless days, always ready with a kindly greeting on his gentle, thoughtful face, you would like him for that alone.

And I want you to like him and to share our silent friendship.

Am I very silly, very sentimental ?" A wave of relief had swept over me, and the mercury of my emotional thermometer, which had shrunk almost into the bulb, leaped up to summer heat.

How charming it was of her and how sweetly intimate, to wish to share this mystical friendship with me! And what a pretty conceit it was, too, and how like this strange, inscrutable maiden, to come here and hold silent converse with this long-departed Greek.

And the pathos of it all touched me deeply amidst the joy of this newborn intimacy.
"Are you scornful ?" she asked, with a shade of disappointment, as I made no reply.
"No, indeed I am not," I answered earnestly.