Love
came into the world before articulate speech, and in its own early youth
it had learned ways and means that it had never forgotten. It was in
this old, primitive way that Martin wooed Ruth. He did not know he was
doing it at first, though later he divined it. The touch of his hand on
hers was vastly more potent than any word he could utter, the impact of
his strength on her imagination was more alluring than the printed poems
and spoken passions of a thousand generations of lovers. Whatever his
tongue could express would have appealed, in part, to her judgment; but
the touch of hand, the fleeting contact, made its way directly to her
instinct. Her judgment was as young as she, but her instincts were as
old as the race and older. They had been young when love was young, and
they were wiser than convention and opinion and all the new-born things.
So her judgment did not act. There was no call upon it, and she did not
realize the strength of the appeal Martin made from moment to moment to
her love-nature. That he loved her, on the other hand, was as clear as
day, and she consciously delighted in beholding his
love-manifestations--the glowing eyes with their tender lights, the
trembling hands, and the never failing swarthy flush that flooded darkly
under his sunburn. She even went farther, in a timid way inciting him,
but doing it so delicately that he never suspected, and doing it half-
consciously, so that she scarcely suspected herself. She thrilled with
these proofs of her power that proclaimed her a woman, and she took an
Eve-like delight in tormenting him and playing upon him.

Tongue-tied by inexperience and by excess of ardor, wooing unwittingly
and awkwardly, Martin continued his approach by contact. The touch of
his hand was pleasant to her, and something deliciously more than
pleasant. Martin did not know it, but he did know that it was not
distasteful to her. Not that they touched hands often, save at meeting
and parting; but that in handling the bicycles, in strapping on the books
of verse they carried into the hills, and in conning the pages of books
side by side, there were opportunities for hand to stray against hand.
And there were opportunities, too, for her hair to brush his cheek, and
for shoulder to touch shoulder, as they leaned together over the beauty
of the books. She smiled to herself at vagrant impulses which arose from
nowhere and suggested that she rumple his hair; while he de