We talked politics and business. No soft sense of domestic intimacy ever opened our hearts, or thawed our language and made it flow easy and limpid. If we had confidences, they were confidences of the counting-house, not of the heart. Nothing in her cherished affection in me, made me better, gentler; she only stirred my brain and whetted my acuteness. She never crept into my heart or influenced its pulse; and for this good reason, no doubt, because I had not the secret of making her love me."
"Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I might laugh at thee, and reckon to despise thy refinements; but as it is dark night and we are by ourselves, I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life. Twenty-five years ago I tried to persuade a beautiful woman to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her nature; she was a stone wall to me, doorless and windowless."

We talked politics and business. If we had confidences, they were confidences of the counting-house, not of the heart. She never crept into my heart."
"Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life. Twenty-five years ago I tried to persuade a beautiful woman to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her nature; she was a stone wall to me, doorless and windowless."
