y aloud: "By
God! By God!"

A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted his
sailor roll.

"Where did you get it?" the policeman demanded.

Martin Eden came back to earth. His was a fluid organism, swiftly
adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks and
crannies. With the policeman's hail he was immediately his ordinary
self, grasping the situation clearly.

"It's a beaut, ain't it?" he laughed back. "I didn't know I was talkin'
out loud."

"You'll be singing next," was the policeman's diagnosis.

"No, I won't. Gimme a match an' I'll catch the next car home."

He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on. "Now wouldn't
that rattle you?" he ejaculated under his breath. "That copper thought I
was drunk." He smiled to himself and meditated. "I guess I was," he
added; "but I didn't think a woman's face'd do it."

He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley. It was
crowded with youths and young men who were singing songs and ever and
again barking out college yells. He studied them curiously. They were
university boys. They went to the same university that she did, were in
her class socially, could know her, could see her every day if they
wanted to. He wondered that they did not want to, that they had been out
having a good time instead of being with her that evening, talking with
her, sitting around her in a worshipful and adoring circle. His thoughts
wandered on. He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose-lipped
mouth. That fellow was vicious, he decided. On shipboard he would be a
sneak, a whiner, a tattler. He, Martin Eden, was a better man than that
fellow. The thought cheered him. It seemed to draw him nearer to Her.
He began comparing himself with the students. He grew conscious of the
muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that he was physically
their master. But their heads were filled with knowledge that enabled
them to talk her talk,--the thought depressed him. But what was a brain
for? he demanded passionately. What they had done, he could do. They
had been studying about life from the books while he had been busy living
life. His brain was just as full of knowledge as theirs, though it was a
different kind of knowledge. How many of them could tie a lanyard knot,
or take a wheel or a lookout? His life spread out before him in a series
of pictures of danger and daring, hardship and toil.