Ruth succeeded in veering right and left and right again, and in running the narrow passage between table and bed to Martin’s side; but Arthur veered too wide and fetched up with clatter and bang of pots and pans in the corner where Martin did his cooking.  Arthur did not linger long.  Ruth occupied the only chair, and having done his duty, he went outside and stood by the gate, the centre of seven marvelling Silvas, who watched him as they would have watched a curiosity in a side-show.  All about the carriage were gathered the children from a dozen blocks, waiting and eager for some tragic and terrible denouement.  Carriages were seen on their street only for weddings and funerals.  Here was neither marriage nor death:  therefore, it was something transcending experience and well worth waiting for.

Martin had been wild to see Ruth.  His was essentially a love-nature, and he possessed more than the average man’s need for sympathy.  He was starving 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