CHAPTER XXIII

That Ruth had little faith in his power as a writer, did not alter her nor diminish her in Martin’s eyes.  In the breathing spell of the vacation he had taken, he had spent many hours in self-analysis, and thereby learned much of himself.  He had discovered that he loved beauty more than fame, and that what desire he had for fame was largely for Ruth’s sake.  It was for this reason that his desire for fame was strong.  He wanted to be great in the world’s eyes; “to make good,” as he expressed it, in order that the woman he loved should be proud of him and deem him worthy.

As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving her was to him sufficient wage.  And more than beauty he loved Ruth.  He considered love the finest thing in the world.  It was love that had worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater than learning and artistry, was love.  Already he had discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth’s, just as it went beyond the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father.  In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world and art and life that she could never hope to possess.

All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her love for him.  Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover for him to besmirch love with criticism.  What did love have to do with Ruth’s divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or equal suffrage?  They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason; it was superrational.  He could not belittle love.  He worshipped it.  Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason.  It was a sublimates condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it came rarely.  Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he favored, he knew the biological significance of love; but by a refined process of the same scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that the human organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life.  Thus, he considered the lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a delight to him to think of “God’s own mad lover,” rising above the things of earth, above wealth and judgment, public opinion and applause, rising above life itself and “dying on a kiss.”