uty he loved
finding the why and wherefore of that beauty. Another modern book he
found treated poetry as a representative art, treated it exhaustively,
with copious illustrations from the best in literature. Never had he
read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books. And his fresh
mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity of desire,
gripped hold of what he read with a virility unusual to the student mind.

When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had
known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and
harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this
new world and expanded. His mind made for unity, and he was surprised
when at first he began to see points of contact between the two worlds.
And he was ennobled, as well, by the loftiness of thought and beauty he
found in the books. This led him to believe more firmly than ever that
up above him, in society like Ruth and her family, all men and women
thought these thoughts and lived them. Down below where he lived was the
ignoble, and he wanted to purge himself of the ignoble that had soiled
all his days, and to rise to that sublimated realm where dwelt the upper
classes. All his childhood and youth had been troubled by a vague
unrest; he had never known what he wanted, but he had wanted something
that he had hunted vainly for until he met Ruth. And now his unrest had
become sharp and painful, and he knew at last, clearly and definitely,
that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he must have.

During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times, and each time
was an added inspiration. She helped him with his English, corrected his
pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was
not all devoted to elementary study. He had seen too much of life, and
his mind was too matured, to be wholly content with fractions, cube root,
parsing, and analysis; and there were times when their conversation
turned on other themes--the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she
had studied. And when she read aloud to him her favorite passages, he
ascended to the topmost heaven of delight. Never, in all the women he
had heard speak, had he heard a voice like hers. The least sound of it
was a stimulus to his love, and he thrilled and throbbed with every word
she uttered. It was the quality of it, the repose, and the musical
modulation--the soft, rich, indefinabl