was new to him. He had never known women
who had made him better. They had always had the counter effect of
making him beastly. He did not know that many of them had done their
best, bad as it was. Never having been conscious of himself, he did not
know that he had that in his being that drew love from women and which
had been the cause of their reaching out for his youth. Though they had
often bothered him, he had never bothered about them; and he would never
have dreamed that there were women who had been better because of him.
Always in sublime carelessness had he lived, till now, and now it seemed
to him that they had always reached out and dragged at him with vile
hands. This was not just to them, nor to himself. But he, who for the
first time was becoming conscious of himself, was in no condition to
judge, and he burned with shame as he stared at the vision of his infamy.

He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking-glass
over the wash-stand. He passed a towel over it and looked again, long
and carefully. It was the first time he had ever really seen himself.
His eyes were made for seeing, but up to that moment they had been filled
with the ever changing panorama of the world, at which he had been too
busy gazing, ever to gaze at himself. He saw the head and face of a
young fellow of twenty, but, being unused to such appraisement, he did
not know how to value it. Above a square-domed forehead he saw a mop of
brown hair, nut-brown, with a wave to it and hints of curls that were a
delight to any woman, making hands tingle to stroke it and fingers tingle
to pass caresses through it. But he passed it by as without merit, in
Her eyes, and dwelt long and thoughtfully on the high, square
forehead,--striving to penetrate it and learn the quality of its content.
What kind of a brain lay behind there? was his insistent interrogation.
What was it capable of? How far would it take him? Would it take him to
her?

He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that were often
quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airs of the sun-
washed deep. He wondered, also, how his eyes looked to her. He tried to
imagine himself she, gazing into those eyes of his, but failed in the
jugglery. He could successfully put himself inside other men's minds,
but they had to be men whose ways of life he knew. He did not know her
way of life. She was wonder and mystery, and how could