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.