Girls Together by Amy Ella Blanchard — Read

IT took some time for Theo's eyes to be entirely opened; it was hard for her to give up her ideals, and she reproached herself with an inconstancy which she decried. It is often so with imaginative natures. While heretofore she had always confided in her aunt, Theo now felt it impossible to share her secret with any one.

The nearest approach to a confidence, strange to say, was in a conversation with Mr. Smith, whose feeling for Theo was very deep. He had watched her pass through her first trials, had learned to value the pure womanly nature which scorned artifice of any kind, and with his natural astuteness, he guessed that she was in danger of bestowing her affections where he dreaded their falling. He knew we are apt to judge persons from the stand-points of our own compositions, not realizing that they who are differently temperamented must act and feel differently. And so he believed that Theo was in danger of clothing her ideal in Felix Parkhurst's form, imagining he possessed the qualities she most admired. And he saw that Felix was clever enough to make her believe that he answered to her ideal, when all which was responsive in him was only surface deep; he was a mere trifler with the true and beautiful, a seeker of new emotions, and only a lover of himself. Young men of this type were most heartily despised by Mr. Smith.