Chapter III - Page 2

promptly urged his ambition to grasp at eternal life. He was
not fit to carry water for her - he knew that; it was a miracle of
luck and a fantastic stroke that had enabled him to see her and be
with her and talk with her that night. It was accidental. There
was no merit in it. He did not deserve such fortune. His mood was
essentially religious. He was humble and meek, filled with self-
disparagement and abasement. In such frame of mind sinners come to
the penitent form. He was convicted of sin. But as the meek and
lowly at the penitent form catch splendid glimpses of their future
lordly existence, so did he catch similar glimpses of the state he
would gain to by possessing her. But this possession of her was
dim and nebulous and totally different from possession as he had
known it. Ambition soared on mad wings, and he saw himself
climbing the heights with her, sharing thoughts with her,
pleasuring in beautiful and noble things with her. It was a soul-
possession he dreamed, refined beyond any grossness, a free
comradeship of spirit that he could not put into definite thought.
He did not think it. For that matter, he did not think at all.
Sensation usurped reason, and he was quivering and palpitant with
emotions he had never known, drifting deliciously on a sea of
sensibility where feeling itself was exalted and spiritualized and
carried beyond the summits of life.

He staggered along like a drunken man, murmuring fervently aloud:
"By God! By God!"

A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted
his sailor roll.

"Where did you get it?" the policeman demanded.

Martin Eden came back to earth. His was a fluid organism, swiftly
adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks
and crannies. With the policeman's hail he was immediately his
ordinary self, grasping the situation clearly.

"It's a beaut, ain't it?" he laughed back. "I didn't know I was
talkin' out loud."

"You'll be singing next," was the policeman's diagnosis.

"No, I won't. Gimme a match an' I'll catch the next car home."

He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on. "Now
wouldn't that rattle you?" he ejaculated under his breath. "That
copper thought I was drunk." He smiled to himself and meditated.
"I guess I was," he added; "but I didn't think a woman's face'd do
it."

He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley. It
was crowded with youths and young men who were singing songs and
ever and again barking out college yells. He studied them
curiously. They were university boys. They went to the same
university that she did, were in her class socially, could know
her, could see her every day if they wanted to. He wondered that