creature of flesh and blood, for his entire acquaintance and association
was with boys--but with the ideal of his inner vision. From that time,
his poetic outbursts came to be filled with--more than aught else--the
surpassing beauty, the worshipful goodness, the divine love of woman. He
was a naturally reverent boy, but for these more than mortal beings, as
they appeared to his fancy, was reserved the supreme worship of his
romantic soul. Indeed, the adoration of his ideal woman--perfect in
body, in mind and in soul, became, and was to be always, a religion to
him.

To imagine himself rescuing from a dark prison tower, hid in a deep
wood, or from a watery grave in a black and rock-bound lake, at
midnight, some lovely maiden whose every thought and heart-beat would
thenceforth be for him alone--this became the entrancing inward vision
of Edgar the Dreamer--the poet--the lover, at whom Edgar Goodfellow with
whisper as insistent as the voice of Conscience, scoffed and sneered,
seeking to make him ashamed; but all in vain.

Of course it was to follow, as the night the day, that the boy would
find someone in whom to dress his ideal. Upon a Sunday soon after his
falling in love, he saw the very maiden of his dreams in the flesh. It
was in the Gothic church. From the remote pew in the gallery where he
sat with his school-mates, he looked down upon a wonderful vision of
white and gold in one of the principal pews of the main aisle. Clad all
in white and with a shower of golden tresses falling over her shoulders,
she was like a glorious lily or a holy angel. Her eyes, uplifted in the
rapture of worship, he divined, rather than saw, were of the hue of
heaven itself. He loved her at once, with all his soul's might. Her
name? Her home? These were mysteries--sacred mysteries--whose
unfathomableness but added to her charm.