. It resides in banks and in the
pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And is it for that, for the recognition
and the money, that you now want me?"

"You are breaking my heart," she sobbed. "You know I love you, that I am
here because I love you."

"I am afraid you don't see my point," he said gently. "What I mean is:
if you love me, how does it happen that you love me now so much more than
you did when your love was weak enough to deny me?"

"Forget and forgive," she cried passionately. "I loved you all the time,
remember that, and I am here, now, in your arms."

"I'm afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to
weigh your love and find out what manner of thing it is."

She withdrew herself from his arms, sat upright, and looked at him long
and searchingly. She was about to speak, then faltered and changed her
mind.

"You see, it appears this way to me," he went on. "When I was all that I
am now, nobody out of my own class seemed to care for me. When my books
were all written, no one who had read the manuscripts seemed to care for
them. In point of fact, because of the stuff I had written they seemed
to care even less for me. In writing the stuff it seemed that I had
committed acts that were, to say the least, derogatory. 'Get a job,'
everybody said."

She made a movement of dissent.

"Yes, yes," he said; "except in your case you told me to get a position.
The homely word _job_, like much that I have written, offends you. It is
brutal. But I assure you it was no less brutal to me when everybody I
knew recommended it to me as they would recommend right conduct to an
immoral creature. But to return. The publication of what I had written,
and the public notice I received, wrought a change in the fibre of your
love. Martin Eden, with his work all performed, you would not marry.
Your love for him was not strong enough to enable you to marry him. But
your love is now strong enough, and I cannot avoid the conclusion that
its strength arises from the publication and the public notice. In your
case I do not mention royalties, though I am certain that they apply to
the change wrought in your mother and father. Of course, all this is not
flattering to me. But worst of all, it makes me question love, sacred
love. Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and
public notice? It would seem so. I have sat and thought upon it till my
head went around."

"Poor, dear he