when you knew nothing of the essential characteristics of life.  You wanted to write about the world and the scheme of existence when the world was a Chinese puzzle to you and all that you could have written would have been about what you did not know of the scheme of existence.  But cheer up, Martin, my boy.  You’ll write yet.  You know a little, a very little, and you’re on the right road now to know more.  Some day, if you’re lucky, you may come pretty close to knowing all that may be known.  Then you will write.”

He brought his great discovery to Ruth, sharing with her all his joy and wonder in it.  But she did not seem to be so enthusiastic over it.  She tacitly accepted it and, in a way, seemed aware of it from her own studies.  It did not stir her deeply, as it did him, and he would have been surprised had he not reasoned it out that it was not new and fresh to her as it was to him.  Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in evolution and had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated the epigram, “There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet.”

But Martin forgave him the sneer, for he had begun to discover that Olney was not in love with Ruth.  Later, he was dumfounded to learn from various little happenings not only that Olney did not care for Ruth, but that he had a positive dislike for her.  Martin could not understand this.  It was a bit of phenomena that he could not correlate with all the rest of the phenomena in the universe.  But nevertheless he felt sorry for the young fellow because of the great lack in his nature that prevented him from a proper appreciation of Ruth’s fineness and beauty.  They rode out into the hills several Sundays on their wheels, and Martin had ample opportunity to observe the armed truce that existed between Ruth and Olney.  The latter chummed with Norman, throwing Arthur and Martin into company with Ruth, for which Martin was duly grateful.

Those Sundays were great days for Martin, greatest because he was with Ruth, and great, also, because they were putting him more on a par with the young men of her class.  In spite of their long years of disciplined education, he was finding himself their intellectual equal, and the hours spent with them in conversation was so much practice for him in the use of the grammar he had studied so hard.  He had abandoned the etiquette books, falling back upon observation to show him the right things to do.  Except when carried away by his enthusiasm, he was always on guard, keenly watchful of their actions and learning their little courtesies and refinements of conduct.