From her childhood he had watched her virtues unfold and none of their
potentialities had gone unobserved by the quiet little old man.
Through the beauty of his own soul he had been enabled to translate the
beauties of another, until gradually Delight Hathaway had come to
symbolize for him universal woman, the prototype of all that was
purest, most selfless, most tender; most to be revered, watched over,
beloved. Yet for all his worship the girl remained for him very human,
a creature with bewitching and appealing ways. In the same spirit in
which he rejoiced in the tint of a rose's petal or the shell-like flush
of a cloud at dawn did he find pleasure in the crimson that colored her
cheek, in the perfection of her features, in the shadowy, fathomless
depths of her eyes. Father, brother, lover, artist, at her shrine he
offered up a composite devotion which sought only her happiness.
With such an attitude of mind to satisfy was it a marvel that in the
matter of selecting a husband for his divinity Willie was difficult to
please; or that he studied with a criticism quite as jealous as Zenas
Henry's own every male who crossed the girl's path?
Yet with all his idealism Willie was a keen observer of life, and from
the first moment of their meeting he had detected in Robert Morton
qualities more nearly akin to his standards than he had discovered in
any of the other outsiders who had come into the hamlet.
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