When Philip said that Evelyn was educated in the world of literature and not in the conflicts of life he had hit the key-note of her condition at the moment she was coming into the world and would have to act for herself. The more he saw of her the more was he impressed with the fact that her discrimination, it might almost be called divination, and her judgment were based upon the best and most vital products of the human mind. A selection had evidently been made for her, until she had acquired the taste, or the habit rather, of choosing only the best for herself. Very little of the trash of literature, or the ignoble--that is to say, the ignoble view of life--had come into her mind. Consequently she judged the world as she came to know it by high standards. And her mind was singularly pure and free from vulgar images. It might be supposed that this sort of education would have its disadvantages. The word is firmly fixed in the idea that both for its pleasure and profit it is necessary to know good and evil. Ignorance of the evil in the world is, however, not to be predicated of those who are familiar only with the great masterpieces of literature, for if they are masterpieces, little or great, they exhibit human nature in all its aspects. And, further than this, it ought to be demonstrable, a priori, that a mind fed on the best and not confused by the weak and diluted, or corrupted by images of the essentially vulgar and vile, would be morally healthy and best fitted to cope with the social problems of life. The Testaments reveal about everything that is known about human nature, but such is their clear, high spirit, and their quality, that no one ever traced mental degeneration or low taste in literature, or want of virility in judgment, to familiarity with them. On the contrary, the most vigorous intellects have acknowledged their supreme indebtedness to them. It is not likely that Philip made any such elaborate analysis of the girl with whom he was in love, or attempted, except by a general reference to the method of her training, to account for the purity of her mind and her vigorous discernment. He was in love with her more subtle and hidden personality, with the girl just becoming a woman, with the mysterious sex that is the inspiration of most of the poetry and a good part of the heroism in the world. And he would have been in love with her, let her education have been what it might. He was in love before he heard her speak. And whatever she would say was bound to have a quality of interest and attraction that could be exercised by no other lips. It might be argued--a priori again, for the world is bound to go on in its own way--that there would be fewer marriages if the illusion of the sex did not suffice for the time to hide intellectual poverty, and, what is worse, ignobleness of disposition.