The image of Letty, with its trusting eyes fixed on him so "solemn sad," and its watching looks full of ministration, haunted him, and was too much for him.

She was never the sort of woman he could have fancied himself falling in love with; he did in fact say to himself that she was only _almost_ a lady-but at the word his heart rebuked him for a traitor to love and its holy laws.
Neither in person was she at all his ideal.

A woman like Hesper, uplifted and strong, broad-fronted and fearless, large-limbed, and full of latent life, was more of the ideal he could have written poetry about.

But we are deeper than we know.

Who is capable of knowing his own ideal?
The ideal of a man's self is hid in the bosom of God, and may lie ages away from his knowledge; and his ideal of woman is the ideal belonging to this unknown self: the ideal only can bring forth an ideal.