noon before
How little she knew the real man ! Could it be possible that this lonely , unlettered boy of the streets of lower New York , starved and stunted in childhood , had within him the soul of a great poet ? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and shadows of these mountain gorges which had depressed her ? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of beautiful waters , his blindness at noon before the most wonderful panorama of mountains and skies on which she had ever gazed , contradicted the theory of the poetic soul . A poet must see beauty where she had seen it -- and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found . His elation was uncanny . What could it mean ?