e product of culture and a gentle
soul. As he listened to her, there rang in the ears of his memory the
harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, in lesser degrees of
harshness, the strident voices of working women and of the girls of his
own class. Then the chemistry of vision would begin to work, and they
would troop in review across his mind, each, by contrast, multiplying
Ruth's glories. Then, too, his bliss was heightened by the knowledge
that her mind was comprehending what she read and was quivering with
appreciation of the beauty of the written thought. She read to him much
from "The Princess," and often he saw her eyes swimming with tears, so
finely was her aesthetic nature strung. At such moments her own emotions
elevated him till he was as a god, and, as he gazed at her and listened,
he seemed gazing on the face of life and reading its deepest secrets. And
then, becoming aware of the heights of exquisite sensibility he attained,
he decided that this was love and that love was the greatest thing in the
world. And in review would pass along the corridors of memory all
previous thrills and burnings he had known,--the drunkenness of wine, the
caresses of women, the rough play and give and take of physical
contests,--and they seemed trivial and mean compared with this sublime
ardor he now enjoyed.

The situation was obscured to Ruth. She had never had any experiences of
the heart. Her only experiences in such matters were of the books, where
the facts of ordinary day were translated by fancy into a fairy realm of
unreality; and she little knew that this rough sailor was creeping into
her heart and storing there pent forces that would some day burst forth
and surge through her in waves of fire. She did not know the actual fire
of love. Her knowledge of love was purely theoretical, and she conceived
of it as lambent flame, gentle as the fall of dew or the ripple of quiet
water, and cool as the velvet-dark of summer nights. Her idea of love
was more that of placid affection, serving the loved one softly in an
atmosphere, flower-scented and dim-lighted, of ethereal calm. She did
not dream of the volcanic convulsions of love, its scorching heat and
sterile wastes of parched ashes. She knew neither her own potencies, nor
the potencies of the world; and the deeps of life were to her seas of
illusion. The conjugal affection of her father and mother constituted
her ideal of love-affinity, and she looke