give in partly
because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed
what every one about you believed, that the measure of manhood was the
carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures'
anatomies. Why, you whelp, you even won other fellows' girls away from
them, not because you wanted the girls, but because in the marrow of
those about you, those who set your moral pace, was the instinct of the
wild stallion and the bull-seal. Well, the years have passed, and what
do you think about it now?"

As if in reply, the vision underwent a swift metamorphosis. The stiff-
rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the
toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the
face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of
communion with beauty and knowledge. The apparition was very like his
present self, and, as he regarded it, he noted the student-lamp by which
it was illuminated, and the book over which it pored. He glanced at the
title and read, "The Science of AEsthetics." Next, he entered into the
apparition, trimmed the student-lamp, and himself went on reading "The
Science of AEsthetics."

CHAPTER XXX

On a beautiful fall day, a day of similar Indian summer to that which had
seen their love declared the year before, Martin read his "Love-cycle" to
Ruth. It was in the afternoon, and, as before, they had ridden out to
their favorite knoll in the hills. Now and again she had interrupted his
reading with exclamations of pleasure, and now, as he laid the last sheet
of manuscript with its fellows, he waited her judgment.

She delayed to speak, and at last she spoke haltingly, hesitating to
frame in words the harshness of her thought.

"I think they are beautiful, very beautiful," she said; "but you can't
sell them, can you? You see what I mean," she said, almost pleaded.
"This writing of yours is not practical. Something is the matter--maybe
it is with the market--that prevents you from earning a living by it. And
please, dear, don't misunderstand me. I am flattered, and made proud,
and all that--I could not be a true woman were it otherwise--that you
should write these poems to me. But they do not make our marriage
possible. Don't you see, Martin? Don't think me mercenary. It is love,
the thought of our future, with which I am burdened. A whole year has
gone by since we learned we loved each other,