"It's this confounded weather, you know."
"Yes, that makes people out of sorts. It doesn't affect children, fortunately."
"No, not children."
"When you see them presently, you'll . . . But you mustn't let our walk make you gloomy. Gerrit, will you try to keep your mind off things and not to be melancholy? I had no idea that you were like this!"
"No, old girl, but what does any one of us know about the other?"
"Not much, I admit."
"Each of us is a sealed book to the other. And yet you're fond of me and I of you. And you know nothing about me . . . nor I about you."
"That's true."
"You know nothing of my secret self. And I know nothing of your secret self."
"No," she confessed softly; and she blushed and thought of the life that had blossomed late in her, blossomed into spring and summer, the life of which nobody knew.
"It has to be so. It can't be otherwise. We perceive so little of one another, in the words we exchange. I have often longed for a friend . . . with whom I could feel his secret self and I mine. I never had a friend like that."
"Gerrit, I did not know . . . that you were so . . . sensitive."
