That he was more a man than he had ever been, and more worthy to be mated with a true woman.

Up to this time I had thought of him more as a boy than as a man, for the years had glided by so quietly that bore him onward with the rest, that he had not arisen in my thought to the full mental stature which the word manhood includes.
"Ah," said I, as I walked on, "what a mistake in Delia Floyd! She is just as capable of high development as a woman as he is as a man.
How admirably would they have mated.

In him, self-reliance, reason, judgment, and deep feeling would have found in her all the qualities they seek--taste, perception, tenderness and love.

They would have grown upwards into higher ideas of life, not downwards into sensualism and mere worldliness, like the many.

Alas! This mistake on her part may ruin them both; for a man of deep, reserved feelings, who suffers a disappointment in love, is often warped in his appreciation of the sex, and grows one-sided in his character as he advances through the cycles of life." I had parted from Henry only a few minutes when I met his rival, Ralph Dewey.