The point was not worth
discussing. Howard and I looked at some things from such an
enormously different level that conversation on them was merely
waste of time. It was as if a man upon a cliff started a
dissertation with another in a boat lying on the sea beneath. Half
the excellent arguments would drift away upon the wind, lost,
rendered nil by the mere difference of level in the two planes. The
two main chains that bound my whole psychological system--self-
control and self-respect--were entirely absent in him. He looked at
his every good action from the point of utility, at his every bad
one from the point of secrecy. He would do the first if it were
useful to him, and the last if it were secret. These, I believe,
were the only two conditions that ever occurred to him. He was weak,
even contemptible, in character, and I could not help clearly seeing
it, but my friendship to him was won over by his talents, and by a
certain good-tempered, easy, pleasant way he had. Widely different
though we were, we had never had a quarrel. We got on together
perfectly, and he might say things to me that would have offended me
from an other man. Liking! Liking! What is it? It is as difficult to
define, as impossible to imprison between the limits of motives and
reasons, of "Whys" and "becauses," as Loving. I liked Howard, or
rather I liked his society, which is not the same thing.
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