He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his shoes.  He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman’s face and by a woman’s soft, white hands.  And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the foul plaster-wall appeared a vision.  He stood in front of a gloomy tenement house.  It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen.  He had seen her home after the bean-feast.  She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit for swine.  His hand was going out to hers as he said good night.  She had put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasn’t going to kiss her.  Somehow he was afraid of her.  And then her hand closed on his and pressed feverishly.  He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, and a great wave of pity welled over him.  He saw her yearning, hungry eyes, and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed from childhood into a frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put his arms about her in large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on the lips.  Her glad little cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a cat.  Poor little starveling!  He continued to stare at the vision of what had happened in the long ago.  His flesh was crawling as it had crawled that night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity.  It was a gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement stones.  And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.

He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them.  Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought.  He took another look at himself in the glass, and said aloud, with great solemnity:-

“Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free library an’ read up on etiquette.  Understand!”

He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body.

“But you’ve got to quit cussin’, Martin, old boy; you’ve got to quit cussin’,” he said aloud.

Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.

CHAPTER V

He awoke next morning from rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere that smelled of soapsuds and dirty clothes, and that was vibrant with the jar and jangle of tormented life.  As he came out of his room he heard the slosh of water, a sharp exclamation, and a resounding smack as his sister visited her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny.  The squall of the child went through him like a knife.  He was aware that the whole thing, the very air he breathed, was repulsive and mean.  How different, he thought, from the atmosphere of beauty and repose of the house wherein Ruth dwelt.  There it was all spiritual.  Here it was all material, and meanly material.