"Did you regret it?" I asked. "Not taking him up on his offer, I mean?" "Ten thousand times, at the very least," he assured me, breaking into a rueful grin. "At the same time ... refusing him was one of the few acts of true nobility to which I would lay claim for myself. It's true, you know," he added, "selflessness does carry its own reward--for if I had taken him, that would have destroyed forever what did exist between us. "To have given him instead the gift of my understanding, hard come by as it was," he added ironically, "left me with his friendship. So I am left with momentary regret on the one hand, but satisfaction on the other. And in the end it was the friendship that I valued most."