her, an' brothers, an' everything--well, I liked it. I'd heard about
such things an' read about such things in some of the books, an' when I
looked around at your house, why, the books come true. But the thing I'm
after is I liked it. I wanted it. I want it now. I want to breathe air
like you get in this house--air that is filled with books, and pictures,
and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an' are clean, an'
their thoughts are clean. The air I always breathed was mixed up with
grub an' house-rent an' scrappin' an booze an' that's all they talked
about, too. Why, when you was crossin' the room to kiss your mother, I
thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen. I've seen a whole
lot of life, an' somehow I've seen a whole lot more of it than most of
them that was with me. I like to see, an' I want to see more, an' I want
to see it different.

"But I ain't got to the point yet. Here it is. I want to make my way to
the kind of life you have in this house. There's more in life than
booze, an' hard work, an' knockin' about. Now, how am I goin' to get it?
Where do I take hold an' begin? I'm willin' to work my passage, you
know, an' I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work. Once I
get started, I'll work night an' day. Mebbe you think it's funny, me
askin' you about all this. I know you're the last person in the world I
ought to ask, but I don't know anybody else I could ask--unless it's
Arthur. Mebbe I ought to ask him. If I was--"

His voice died away. His firmly planned intention had come to a halt on
the verge of the horrible probability that he should have asked Arthur
and that he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately.
She was too absorbed in striving to reconcile the stumbling, uncouth
speech and its simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face. She
had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power. Here was a man
who could do anything, was the message she read there, and it accorded
ill with the weakness of his spoken thought. And for that matter so
complex and quick was her own mind that she did not have a just
appreciation of simplicity. And yet she had caught an impression of
power in the very groping of this mind. It had seemed to her like a
giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held him down. Her face
was all sympathy when she did speak.

"What you need, you realize yourself, and it is education. You should go