all right," he said.

"I beg pardon?"

"I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest."

"Oh," said the other, with comprehension.

"What is the best time to call? The afternoon?--not too close to meal-
time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?"

"I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call
her up on the telephone and find out."

"I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked:-

"When you're speakin' to a young lady--say, for instance, Miss Lizzie
Smith--do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?"

"Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss
Smith' always--until you come to know her better."

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

"Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply
over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return
the borrowed books.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman's eyes took in immediately
the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable change in him
for the better. Also, she was struck by his face. It was almost
violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him and at her
in waves of force. She felt the urge again of the desire to lean toward
him for warmth, and marvelled again at the effect his presence produced
upon her. And he, in turn, knew again the swimming sensation of bliss
when he felt the contact of her hand in greeting. The difference between
them lay in that she was cool and self-possessed while his face flushed
to the roots of the hair. He stumbled with his old awkwardness after
her, and his shoulders swung and lurched perilously.

Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on easily--more
easily by far than he had expected. She made it easy for him; and the
gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her more madly than
ever. They talked first of the borrowed books, of the Swinburne he was
devoted to, and of the Browning he did not understand; and she led the
conversation on from subject to subject, while she pondered the problem
of how she could be of help to him. She had thought of this often since
their first meeting. She wanted to help him. He made a call upon her
pity and tenderness that no one had ever made before, and the pity was
not so much derogatory of him as maternal in her. Her pity could not be
of the common sort, when the man wh