What had been done could be done again, and he, Martin Eden, could do it
and would do it for Ruth Morse. He went back to his room and to the
volume of Spencer's "Sociology" lying open on the bed. But he could not
read. Love tormented him and overrode his will, so that, despite all
determination, he found himself at the little ink-stained table. The
sonnet he composed that night was the first of a love-cycle of fifty
sonnets which was completed within two months. He had the "Love-sonnets
from the Portuguese" in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best
conditions for great work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of
his own sweet love-madness.

The many hours he was not with Ruth he devoted to the "Love-cycle," to
reading at home, or to the public reading-rooms, where he got more
closely in touch with the magazines of the day and the nature of their
policy and content. The hours he spent with Ruth were maddening alike in
promise and in inconclusiveness. It was a week after he cured her
headache that a moonlight sail on Lake Merritt was proposed by Norman and
seconded by Arthur and Olney. Martin was the only one capable of
handling a boat, and he was pressed into service. Ruth sat near him in
the stern, while the three young fellows lounged amidships, deep in a
wordy wrangle over "frat" affairs.

The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of the
sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden feeling of
loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of wind was heeling the boat
over till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and the other on
main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make
out the near-lying north shore. He was unaware of her gaze, and she
watched him intently, speculating fancifully about the strange warp of
soul that led him, a young man with signal powers, to fritter away his
time on the writing of stories and poems foredoomed to mediocrity and
failure.

Her eyes wandered along the strong throat, dimly seen in the starlight,
and over the firm-poised head, and the old desire to lay her hands upon
his neck came back to her. The strength she abhorred attracted her. Her
feeling of loneliness became more pronounced, and she felt tired. Her
position on the heeling boat irked her, and she remembered the headache
he had cured and the soothing rest that resided in him. He was sitting
beside her, quite beside her, and th