“—­Oh, yes,” Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, “I know you call it general culture.  But it doesn’t matter what you study if you want general culture.  You can study French, or you can study German, or cut them both out and study Esperanto, you’ll get the culture tone just the same.  You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, though it will never be any use to you.  It will be culture, though.  Why, Ruth studied Saxon, became clever in it,—­that was two years ago,—­and all that she remembers of it now is ’Whan that sweet Aprile with his schowers soote’—­isn’t that the way it goes?”

“But it’s given you the culture tone just the same,” he laughed, again heading her off.  “I know.  We were in the same classes.”

“But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something,” Ruth cried out.  Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two spots of color.  “Culture is the end in itself.”

“But that is not what Martin wants.”

“How do you know?”

“What do you want, Martin?” Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him.

Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth.

“Yes, what do you want?” Ruth asked.  “That will settle it.”

“Yes, of course, I want culture,” Martin faltered.  “I love beauty, and culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty.”

She nodded her head and looked triumph.

“Rot, and you know it,” was Olney’s comment.  “Martin’s after career, not culture.  It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental to career.  If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary.  Martin wants to write, but he’s afraid to say so because it will put you in the wrong.”

“And why does Martin want to write?” he went on.  “Because he isn’t rolling in wealth.  Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general culture?  Because you don’t have to make your way in the world.  Your father sees to that.  He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest.  What rotten good is our education, yours and mine and Arthur’s and Norman’s?  We’re soaked in general culture, and if our daddies went broke to-day, we’d be falling down to-morrow on teachers’ examinations.  The best job you could get, Ruth, would be a country school or music teacher in a girls’ boarding-school.”

“And pray what would you do?” she asked.

“Not a blessed thing.  I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common labor, and I might get in as instructor in Hanley’s cramming joint—­I say might, mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week for sheer inability.”

Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded Ruth.  A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened.  Reason had nothing to do with love.  It mattered not whether the woman he loved reasoned correctly or incorrectly.  Love was above reason.  If it just happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a career, that did not make her a bit less lovable.  She was all lovable, and what she thought had nothing to do with her lovableness.