eptive and
responsive, while his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work
establishing relations of likeness and difference. "Mr. Eden," was what
he had thrilled to--he who had been called "Eden," or "Martin Eden," or
just "Martin," all his life. And "_Mister_!" It was certainly going
some, was his internal comment. His mind seemed to turn, on the instant,
into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his consciousness
endless pictures from his life, of stoke-holes and forecastles, camps and
beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals and slum streets,
wherein the thread of association was the fashion in which he had been
addressed in those various situations.

And then he turned and saw the girl. The phantasmagoria of his brain
vanished at sight of her. She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide,
spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair. He did not know how she
was dressed, except that the dress was as wonderful as she. He likened
her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem. No, she was a spirit, a
divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the earth. Or
perhaps the books were right, and there were many such as she in the
upper walks of life. She might well be sung by that chap, Swinburne.
Perhaps he had had somebody like her in mind when he painted that girl,
Iseult, in the book there on the table. All this plethora of sight, and
feeling, and thought occurred on the instant. There was no pause of the
realities wherein he moved. He saw her hand coming out to his, and she
looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands, frankly, like a man.
The women he had known did not shake hands that way. For that matter,
most of them did not shake hands at all. A flood of associations,
visions of various ways he had made the acquaintance of women, rushed
into his mind and threatened to swamp it. But he shook them aside and
looked at her. Never had he seen such a woman. The women he had known!
Immediately, beside her, on either hand, ranged the women he had known.
For an eternal second he stood in the midst of a portrait gallery,
wherein she occupied the central place, while about her were limned many
women, all to be weighed and measured by a fleeting glance, herself the
unit of weight and measure. He saw the weak and sickly faces of the
girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous girls from the
south of Market. There were women of the cattle camps, and swarthy