orhood,
an ideal--a dream girl, compounded equally of meditation and books.
She was a wonderful girl, Martin's dream girl; she possessed all the
virtues, and no faults, and she was very, very beautiful. At first she
was a blond maid, and when she framed herself before his eyes, out of
the smoke curling upward from his pipe, she was a vision of golden
tresses, and rosy cheeks, and clear blue eyes.

But then came Miss Pincher, the manicure maid, to reside at Martin's
boarding-house. Miss Pincher's hair was very, very yellow--there were
dark hints about that boarding-house board anent royal colors coming
out of drug-store bottles--and her eyes were a cold, hard blue. She
cast her hard, bold eyes upon Martin. She was a feminist in love.
Martin fled horrified before her determined, audacious wooing.

His blood idol was overthrown, his ideal slain. He went to bed with
the stark corpse, and awoke to contemplate with satisfaction a new
image, a brooding, soulful brunette.

Then, Martin suddenly discovered that his ideal was neither a rosy
Daughter of the _Dawn_, nor a tragic Queen of the Night--she was a
merry-faced, neutral-tinted Sister of the Afternoon, a girl with brown
hair, so dark as to be black by night, and big brown eyes. A girl with
a rich contralto voice that commanded or cajoled in a most distracting
fashion. A girl who commanded respect by her mastery of a masculine
profession, yet who thereby sacrificed none of her appealing
femininity. A girl named Ruth LeMoyne.

There was nothing staid or conservative about the manner of Martin's
receiving this intelligence. It was his nature to fall in love with a
hard bump, completely and without reservation. He recognized Ruth as
the girl of his dreams the very first moment he obtained a good
daylight look at her--that is, upon the afternoon he first mounted to
the _Cohasset's_ deck, and was welcomed by the smiling, lithesome queen
of the storm. Blonde and brunette had in that instant been completely
erased from his memory; he had recognized in the mate of the _Cohasset_
the companion of his fanciful hours, in every feature she was the girl
of his dreams.

There are people who say that every person has his, or her, preordained
mate somewhere in the world. They say that the true love, the big
love, is only possible when these predestined folk meet. They say that
love flames instantly at such a meeting, and that the couple will
recognize each other though th