tarving for sympathy, which, with him, meant intelligent understanding;
and he had yet to learn that Ruth's sympathy was largely sentimental and
tactful, and that it proceeded from gentleness of nature rather than from
understanding of the objects of her sympathy. So it was while Martin
held her hand and gladly talked, that her love for him prompted her to
press his hand in return, and that her eyes were moist and luminous at
sight of his helplessness and of the marks suffering had stamped upon his
face.

But while he told her of his two acceptances, of his despair when he
received the one from the Transcontinental, and of the corresponding
delight with which he received the one from the White Mouse, she did not
follow him. She heard the words he uttered and understood their literal
import, but she was not with him in his despair and his delight. She
could not get out of herself. She was not interested in selling stories
to magazines. What was important to her was matrimony. She was not
aware of it, however, any more than she was aware that her desire that
Martin take a position was the instinctive and preparative impulse of
motherhood. She would have blushed had she been told as much in plain,
set terms, and next, she might have grown indignant and asserted that her
sole interest lay in the man she loved and her desire for him to make the
best of himself. So, while Martin poured out his heart to her, elated
with the first success his chosen work in the world had received, she
paid heed to his bare words only, gazing now and again about the room,
shocked by what she saw.

For the first time Ruth gazed upon the sordid face of poverty. Starving
lovers had always seemed romantic to her,--but she had had no idea how
starving lovers lived. She had never dreamed it could be like this. Ever
her gaze shifted from the room to him and back again. The steamy smell
of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was
sickening. Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful
woman washed frequently. Such was the contagiousness of degradation.
When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by
his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days'
growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give
him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, inside and out,
but it seemed to emphasize that animal-like strength of his which