love, and in both matters he prospered. He was
soon spilling over with vitality, and each day he saw Ruth, at the moment
of meeting, she experienced the old shock of his strength and health.

"Be careful," her mother warned her once again. "I am afraid you are
seeing too much of Martin Eden."

But Ruth laughed from security. She was sure of herself, and in a few
days he would be off to sea. Then, by the time he returned, she would be
away on her visit East. There was a magic, however, in the strength and
health of Martin. He, too, had been told of her contemplated Eastern
trip, and he felt the need for haste. Yet he did not know how to make
love to a girl like Ruth. Then, too, he was handicapped by the
possession of a great fund of experience with girls and women who had
been absolutely different from her. They had known about love and life
and flirtation, while she knew nothing about such things. Her prodigious
innocence appalled him, freezing on his lips all ardors of speech, and
convincing him, in spite of himself, of his own unworthiness. Also he
was handicapped in another way. He had himself never been in love
before. He had liked women in that turgid past of his, and been
fascinated by some of them, but he had not known what it was to love
them. He had whistled in a masterful, careless way, and they had come to
him. They had been diversions, incidents, part of the game men play, but
a small part at most. And now, and for the first time, he was a
suppliant, tender and timid and doubting. He did not know the way of
love, nor its speech, while he was frightened at his loved one's clear
innocence.

In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirling on
through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule of conduct
which was to the effect that when one played a strange game, he should
let the other fellow play first. This had stood him in good stead a
thousand times and trained him as an observer as well. He knew how to
watch the thing that was strange, and to wait for a weakness, for a place
of entrance, to divulge itself. It was like sparring for an opening in
fist-fighting. And when such an opening came, he knew by long experience
to play for it and to play hard.

So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love but not
daring. He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure of himself.
Had he but known it, he was following the right course with her.