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, indefinable product of culture and a gentle soul.