VII
IT was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that he did not believe in the possibility of friendship existing between man and woman.
The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that absolute rule. Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning by friendship the frank unreserve, as before another human being, of thoughts and sensations; an objectless and necessary sincerity of one’s innermost life trying to react upon the profound sympathies of another existence.
His favorite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary, and resolute angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud in the first-floor apartments of a very fine Parisian house, was the recipient of Martin Decoud's confidences as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, and even failures. . . .
“Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another South American republic. One more or less, what does it matter? They may come into the world like evil flowers on a hot-bed of rotten institutions; but the seed of this one has germinated in your brothers brain, and that will be enough for your devoted assent. I am writing this to you by the light of a single candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbor, kept by an Italian called Viola, a protégé of Mrs. Gould. The whole building, which, for all I know, may have
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