Chapter XX

CHAPTER XX

The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more. Stories and
poems were springing into spontaneous creation in his brain, and he
made notes of them against the future time when he would give them
expression. But he did not write. This was his little vacation;
he had resolved to devote it to rest and love, and in both matters
he prospered. He was soon spilling over with vitality, and each
day he saw Ruth, at the moment of meeting, she experienced the old
shock of his strength and health.

"Be careful," her mother warned her once again. "I am afraid you
are seeing too much of Martin Eden."

But Ruth laughed from security. She was sure of herself, and in a
few days he would be off to sea. Then, by the time he returned,
she would be away on her visit East. There was a magic, however,
in the strength and health of Martin. He, too, had been told of
her contemplated Eastern trip, and he felt the need for haste. Yet
he did not know how to make love to a girl like Ruth. Then, too,
he was handicapped by the possession of a great fund of experience
with girls and women who had been absolutely different from her.
They had known about love and life and flirtation, while she knew
nothing about such things. Her prodigious innocence appalled him,
freezing on his lips all ardors of speech, and convincing him, in
spite of himself, of his own unworthiness. Also he was handicapped
in another way. He had himself never been in love before. He had
liked women in that turgid past of his, and been fascinated by some
of them, but he had not known what it was to love them. He had
whistled in a masterful, careless way, and they had come to him.
They had been diversions, incidents, part of the game men play, but
a small part at most. And now, and for the first time, he was a
suppliant, tender and timid and doubting. He did not know the way
of love, nor its speech, while he was frightened at his loved one's
clear innocence.

In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirling
on through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule of
conduct which was to the effect that when one played a strange
game, he should let the other fellow play first. This had stood
him in good stead a thousand times and trained him as an observer
as well. He knew how to watch the thing that was strange, and to
wait for a weakness, for a place of entrance, to divulge itself.
It was like sparring for an opening in fist-fighting. And when
such an opening came, he knew by long experience to play for it and
to play hard.

So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love but
not daring. He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure of
himself. Had he but known it, he