he Silvas to overflowing.

It was with this extraordinary procession trooping at his and Maria's
heels into a confectioner's in quest if the biggest candy-cane ever made,
that he encountered Ruth and her mother. Mrs. Morse was shocked. Even
Ruth was hurt, for she had some regard for appearances, and her lover,
cheek by jowl with Maria, at the head of that army of Portuguese
ragamuffins, was not a pretty sight. But it was not that which hurt so
much as what she took to be his lack of pride and self-respect. Further,
and keenest of all, she read into the incident the impossibility of his
living down his working-class origin. There was stigma enough in the
fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the face of the world--her
world--was going too far. Though her engagement to Martin had been kept
secret, their long intimacy had not been unproductive of gossip; and in
the shop, glancing covertly at her lover and his following, had been
several of her acquaintances. She lacked the easy largeness of Martin
and could not rise superior to her environment. She had been hurt to the
quick, and her sensitive nature was quivering with the shame of it. So
it was, when Martin arrived later in the day, that he kept her present in
his breast-pocket, deferring the giving of it to a more propitious
occasion. Ruth in tears--passionate, angry tears--was a revelation to
him. The spectacle of her suffering convinced him that he had been a
brute, yet in the soul of him he could not see how nor why. It never
entered his head to be ashamed of those he knew, and to take the Silvas
out to a Christmas treat could in no way, so it seemed to him, show lack
of consideration for Ruth. On the other hand, he did see Ruth's point of
view, after she had explained it; and he looked upon it as a feminine
weakness, such as afflicted all women and the best of women.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"Come on,--I'll show you the real dirt," Brissenden said to him, one
evening in January.

They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry Building,
returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to show Martin the "real
dirt." He turned and fled across the water-front, a meagre shadow in a
flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up with him. At a
wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of old port, and
with one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, Martin at his heels
burdened with several quart-bottles of whiske