So firm was her confidence in his nature and dispassionate judgment, that she yielded to his opinions a deferential homage, such as she had scarcely paid even to Mr. Hammond.
Gradually and unconsciously she learned to lean upon his strong, clear mind, and to find in his society a quiet but very precious happiness. The antagonism of their characters was doubtless one cause of the attraction which each found in the other, and furnished the balance-wheel which both required.
Edna's intense and dreamy idealism demanded a check, which the positivism of the editor supplied; and his extensive and rigidly accurate information, on almost all scientific topics, constituted a valuable treasury of knowledge to which he never denied her access.
His faith in Christianity was like his conviction of the truth of mathematics, more an intellectual process and the careful deduction of logic than the result of some emotional impulse; his religion like his dialectics was cold, consistent, irreproachable, unanswerable. Never seeking a controversy on any subject, he never shunned one, and, during its continuance, his demeanor was invariably courteous, but unyielding, and even when severe he was rarely bitter.
Very early in life his intellectual seemed to have swallowed up his emotional nature, as Aaron's rod did those of the magicians of Pharaoh, and only the absence of dogmatism, and the habitual suavity of his manner, atoned for his unbending obstinacy on all points.
Edna's fervid and beautiful enthusiasm surged and chafed and broke over this man's stern, flinty realism, like the warm, blue waters of the Gulf Stream that throw their silvery spray and foam against the glittering walls of sapphire icebergs sailing slowly southward. Her glowing imagery fell upon the bristling points of his close phalanx of arguments, as gorgeous tropical garlands caught and empaled by bayonets until they faded.
Merciless as an anatomical lecturer, he would smilingly take up one of her metaphors and dissect it, and over the pages of her MSS. for "Maga" his gravely spoken criticisms fell withering as hoar frost.
They differed in all respects, yet daily they felt the need of each other's society. The frozen man of forty sunned himself in the genial presence of the lovely girl of nineteen, and in the dawn of her literary career she felt a sense of security from his proffered guidance, even as a wayward and ambitious child, just learning to walk, totters along with less apprehension when the strong, steady hand it refuses to hold is yet near enough to catch and save from a serious fall.
While fearlessly attacking all heresy, whether political, scientific, or ethical, all latitudinarianism in manners and sciolism in letters, he commanded the confidence and esteem of all, and became in great degree the centre around which the savants and literati of the city revolved.