The fact in a fiction

‘This is what I would like—to be as intimate with you as our spirits are intimate—respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane one another by word or action, even by a thought. Between us, if necessary, let there be no acquaintance.’

‘I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?’

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Though the poet says, ‘’Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to impute excellence,’ yet we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us by any behaviour, or ever treat us well enough.