se her
mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on.

"But I am interested in him dreadfully," she continued. "In a way he is
my protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend--but not exactly
friend; rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he
frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog I have taken for a plaything,
like some of the 'frat' girls, and he is tugging hard, and showing his
teeth, and threatening to break loose."

Again her mother waited.

"He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much good in
him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like in--in the other
way. You see, I have been thinking. He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he
has fought with his fists (he has told me so, and he likes it; he says
so). He is all that a man should not be--a man I would want for my--"
her voice sank very low--"husband. Then he is too strong. My prince
must be tall, and slender, and dark--a graceful, bewitching prince. No,
there is no danger of my failing in love with Martin Eden. It would be
the worst fate that could befall me."

"But it is not that that I spoke about," her mother equivocated. "Have
you thought about him? He is so ineligible in every way, you know, and
suppose he should come to love you?"

"But he does--already," she cried.

"It was to be expected," Mrs. Morse said gently. "How could it be
otherwise with any one who knew you?"

"Olney hates me!" she exclaimed passionately. "And I hate Olney. I feel
always like a cat when he is around. I feel that I must be nasty to him,
and even when I don't happen to feel that way, why, he's nasty to me,
anyway. But I am happy with Martin Eden. No one ever loved me before--no
man, I mean, in that way. And it is sweet to be loved--that way. You
know what I mean, mother dear. It is sweet to feel that you are really
and truly a woman." She buried her face in her mother's lap, sobbing.
"You think I am dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just
how I feel."

Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who was a
bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-daughter. The
experiment had succeeded. The strange void in Ruth's nature had been
filled, and filled without danger or penalty. This rough sailor-fellow
had been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made
her conscious of her womanhood.

"His hand trembles," Ruth was confessing, her f