I have never ceased to love you." "I am _so_ glad!" answered Mary.

"People don't generally take much to me--at least, not to come _near_ me.

But you can _be_ friends without _having_ friends," she added, with a sententiousness she had inherited.
"I don't quite understand you," said Letty, sadly; "but, then, I never could quite, you know.

Tom finds me very stupid." These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she shrunk from any approach to confidences with _one_ of a married pair.
To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a breach of unity, except, indeed, that were already, and irreparably, broken.

To encourage in any married friend the placing of a confidence that excludes the other, is to encourage that friend's self-degradation.