And, moreover, the stimulus of love seemed to
induce a vast intellectual growth; things that had been difficult of
comprehension became lucidly clear; prejudices and ignorances fell
away from him of their own accord. A shut world had suddenly become an
open world.
As a grown man he returned to the benches of evening school. He
learned to write his beautiful copper-plate hand, and knocked the
bottom out of arithmetic and geography. Then came sheer erudition--the
nature of chemical elements, stars in their courses, kings of England
with their Magna Chartas and habeas corpuses. Nor content even then,
he must needs grapple with Roman emperors and Greek republics, and
master the fabled lore concerning gods and goddesses, cloven-footed
satyrs, and naked nymphs of the grove. But he understood that, in
spite of all this culture, in spite, too, of his greater care for
costume and his increased employment of soap and water, Mavis was
still enormously above him. The aunt, a smooth-tongued little woman
whom for a long time he regarded as implacably hostile to his suit,
made him measure the height of the dividing space every time that he
called at North Ride Cottage. Plainly trying to crush him with the
respectability both of herself and of her surroundings, she showed off
all the presents from the Abbey--the china and glass ornaments, the
piano; the photographs of Mr.
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