only the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressing
an idea.

The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his own
imagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle;
defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewhere
along the way he would write a story worth while. Already he was
dramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thieving
adventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. But
somehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end.
Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular fact
that Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.

One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men had
tried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough.
The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because the
eyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly what
he was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she would
act.

"I haven't offended you?"--not contritely but curiously.

"No"--as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

Something in her lack of embarrassment irritated him. "Has no man
ever kissed you?"

"No." Which was literally the truth.

He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man had
kissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But his
astonishment would have been great indeed had he known that not
even her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or with
hands.

Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of the
kiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequently
encountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments and
latterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her--unshaven derelicts,
some of them terrible--but she had always managed to escape. What
had urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct of
the good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of those
men...!

She knew what arms were for--to fold and embrace and to hold one
tightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profound
mystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in love
stories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all human
beings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her an
anomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.

This salute of his--actually the first she could remember--while it
did not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new