on-reading

In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends__ooks__t__ because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: __hat did they think of us?____id we make a mistake and say something tactless?____id they like us?___or is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else. All such agitating thoughts expire as we enter the pure and calm friendship of reading.