That was the time he needed dinners, and went
weak and faint for lack of them and lost weight from sheer famine. That
was the paradox of it. When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him,
and now that he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his
appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why? There
was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was no different. All
the work he had done was even at that time work performed. Mr. and Mrs.
Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through Ruth had
urged that he take a clerk's position in an office. Furthermore, they
had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript after manuscript of his
had been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read them. It was the
very same work that had put his name in all the papers, and, it was his
name being in all the papers that led them to invite him.

One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for himself
or for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for himself or
for his work, but for the fame that was his, because he was somebody
amongst men, and--why not?--because he had a hundred thousand dollars or
so. That was the way bourgeois society valued a man, and who was he to
expect it otherwise? But he was proud. He disdained such valuation. He
desired to be valued for himself, or for his work, which, after all, was
an expression of himself. That was the way Lizzie valued him. The work,
with her, did not even count. She valued him, himself. That was the way
Jimmy, the plumber, and all the old gang valued him. That had been
proved often enough in the days when he ran with them; it had been proved
that Sunday at Shell Mound Park. His work could go hang. What they
liked, and were willing to scrap for, was just Mart Eden, one of the
bunch and a pretty good guy.

Then there was Ruth. She had liked him for himself, that was
indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the
bourgeois standard of valuation more. She had opposed his writing, and
principally, it seemed to him, because it did not earn money. That had
been her criticism of his "Love-cycle." She, too, had urged him to get a
job. It was true, she refined it to "position," but it meant the same
thing, and in his own mind the old nomenclature stuck. He had read her
all that he wrote--poems, stories, essays--"Wiki-Wiki," "The Shame of the
Sun," everything. And she had always