JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY: XXVII. BY THE STILE

IT came to pass, therefore, that this hour of solitude à deux, from which a common sorrow banished self-consciousness and affectation, not only brought these young people closer together than all their previous intercourse had done, but did so without any present reference of either to the fact. The subject of their talk was so extraneous to themselves; their concern for the future of the operatives, whose hopes seemed to have been raised only to be dashed, was so impersonal, and their ways of considering things in general appeared so obvious and necessary to each, that that most rare and penetrating pleasure, of intellectual and moral sympathy with those who have had an attraction for us prior to all overt reason, insinuated itself into either soul under the guise of a mere abstract conformity of sentiment, capable of duplicating itself under other circumstances and with other companions.