It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon his attitude, that he was very quiet.  He did not know that his quietness was giving the lie to Arthur’s words of the day before, when that brother of hers had announced that he was going to bring a wild man home to dinner and for them not to be alarmed, because they would find him an interesting wild man.  Martin Eden could not have found it in him, just then, to believe that her brother could be guilty of such treachery—­especially when he had been the means of getting this particular brother out of an unpleasant row.  So he sat at table, perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time charmed by all that went on about him.  For the first time he realized that eating was something more than a utilitarian function.  He was unaware of what he ate.  It was merely food.  He was feasting his love of beauty at this table where eating was an aesthetic function.  It was an intellectual function, too.  His mind was stirred.  He heard words spoken that were meaningless to him, and other words that he had seen only in books and that no man or woman he had known was of large enough mental caliber to pronounce.  When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips of the members of this marvellous family, her family, he thrilled with delight.  The romance, and beauty, and high vigor of the books were coming true.  He was in that rare and blissful state wherein a man sees his dreams stalk out from the crannies of fantasy and become fact.

Never had he been at such an altitude of living, and he kept himself in the background, listening, observing, and pleasuring, replying in reticent monosyllables, saying, “Yes, miss,” and “No, miss,” to her, and “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am,” to her mother.  He curbed the impulse, arising out of his sea-training, to say “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” to her brothers.  He felt that it would be inappropriate and a confession of inferiority on his part—­which would never do if he was to win to her.  Also, it was a dictate of his pride.  “By God!” he cried to himself, once; “I’m just as good as them, and if they do know lots that I don’t, I could learn ’m a few myself, all the same!” And the next moment, when she or her mother addressed him as “Mr. Eden,” his aggressive pride was forgotten, and he was glowing and warm with delight.  He was a civilized man, that was what he was, shoulder to shoulder, at dinner, with people he had read about in books.  He was in the books himself, adventuring through the printed pages of bound volumes.

But while he belied Arthur’s description, and appeared a gentle lamb rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action.  He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for the high-pitched dominance of his nature.  He talked only when he had to, and then his speech was like his walk to the table, filled with jerks and halts as he groped in his polyglot vocabulary