disappointment.

"To sit up with a sick friend, I suppose?" she sneered.

"No, a real, honest date with--" he faltered, "with a girl."

"You're not stringin' me?" she asked earnestly.

He looked her in the eyes and answered: "It's straight, all right. But
why can't we meet some other time? You ain't told me your name yet. An'
where d'ye live?"

"Lizzie," she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his arm,
while her body leaned against his. "Lizzie Connolly. And I live at
Fifth an' Market."

He talked on a few minutes before saying good night. He did not go home
immediately; and under the tree where he kept his vigils he looked up at
a window and murmured: "That date was with you, Ruth. I kept it for
you."

CHAPTER VII

A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth
Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up
to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died
away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to
tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable
blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways
of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to
read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs
of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a
body superbly strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It had lain
fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the books was
concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. It had never been jaded by
study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth
that would not let go.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so
far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack of
preparation. He attempted to read books that required years of
preliminary specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated
philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head
would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It was
the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he found
Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of
the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were obsolete. He was
bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become interested, in a
day, in economics, industry, and po