He loved his homely work and calling as never before,
because he saw how on every side it touched and blended with the beautiful
and sacred. Its highest outcome was like the blossoms before him which had
developed from a rank soil, dark roots, and prosaic woody stems. The grain
he raised fed and matured the delicate human perfection shown in every
graceful and unconscious pose of the young girl. She was Nature's priestess
interpreting to him a higher, gentler world which before he had seen but
dimly--interpreting it all the more clearly because she made no effort to
reveal it. She led the way, he followed, and the earth ceased to be an
aggregate of forms and material forces. With his larger capabilities he
might yet become her master, but now, with an utter absence of vanity, he
recognized how much she was doing for him, how she was widening his horizon
and uplifting his thoughts and motives, and he reverenced her as such men
ever do a woman that leads them to a higher plane of life.
No such deep thoughts and vague homage perplexed Burt as he assisted Amy
with attentions that were assiduous and almost garrulous. The brightness
of the morning was in his handsome face, and the gladness of his buoyant
temperament in his heart. Amy was just to his taste--pretty, piquant,
rose-hued, and a trifle thorny too, at times, he thought. He believed
that he loved her with a boundless devotion--at least it seemed so that
morning.
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