was intended. Anger comes also, not mere resentment, but the passion that would have destroyed all vestiges of friendship. That can be made out from Tennyson's words: 'I put down my pipe and stared at the fire for ten minutes till the stranger vanished up the chimney.'
Milnes, the smaller man, had been only able to think of one thing; his friend in those ten minutes staring at the fire had taken in the case in all its bearings; had felt the injury, had understood the irritation of his friend, and been bitterly amused by his vanity and dumbfounded by his want of sense. Staring at the fire, he had seen all this as a poor wretched thing which the Stranger, the Accuser, was doing his worst to make into a lasting enmity. He stares the stranger out of countenance and up the chimney; the friendship remains unbroken, because Tennyson is magnanimous; and one need not require any more convincing proof of the largeness and generosity of his nature and his mind; of his intellectual virtue, if I may
