Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to sober him.

“You are going to leave me, Mart?” he queried hopelessly.

Martin nodded, and called the boy to take the message to the telegraph office.

“Wait,” Joe muttered. “Let me think.”

Martin’s arm around him and supporting him, while he thought.

“Write that two laundrymen are leaving,” he said abruptly. “Here, write so.”

Martin looked at him for a moment, then cried:

“By God, I think you’re right! Better a hobo, man, than a beast of toil.”

“I was in hospital, once,” Joe remembered again. “It was beautiful. Typhoid – did I tell you?”

While Martin changed the telegram to “two laundrymen,” Joe went on:

“I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, isn’t it? But when I work like a slave all week, I must drink. Here, let me pay half of that telegram. Come on, everybody, drink!” Joe called.

Martin was standing, ready to go. They shook hands, and Joe said:

“I’m going to see you again, Mart, before you and me die. I feel it in my bones. Good-bye, Mart, and be good. I like you, you know.”

Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw her very often. She gained her degree, she was doing no more studying. Martin was very tired of writing. This gave them time for each other that they had never had before.

At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept much, and spent long hours thinking and doing nothing. The first signs of reawakening came when he discovered languid interest in the daily paper. Then he began to read again – light novels, and poetry; and after several days his splendid body and health made new vitality.

Ruth showed her disappointment when he announced that he was going to sea for another voyage.

“Why do you want to do that?” she asked.

“Money,” was the answer. “For my next attack on the editors. Money is the sinews of war, in my case – money and patience.”

“But if all you wanted was money, why didn’t you stay in the laundry?”

“Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of that sort drives to drink.”

She stared at him with horror in her eyes.

“Do you mean – ?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Just that. Several times.”

She drew away from him.

“No man that I have ever known did that – ever did that.”

“Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs,” he laughed bitterly. “I’m going to sea one more voyage. It will be my last, I think, for when I come back, I shall break into the magazines. I am certain of it.”

She was silent.

“Some day I shall write it – ‘The Degradation of Toil’ or the ‘Psychology of Drink in the Working-class’, or something like that for a title.”

They walked a lot, and read poetry aloud, and discussed many things, and spent time with each other – more and more.

“I can recommend my little girl to be careful,” her mother warned her one day.

“I know what you mean. But it is impossible. He – ”

Ruth was blushing.

“He is rough, brutal, strong – too strong,” her mother finished the sentence for her.

“And he frightens me. Sometimes I am in terror of him, when he talks about the things he has done.”

“But I am interested in him,” Ruth continued. “He is my protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend – but not exactly friend; rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog.”

Her mother waited.

“He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much good in him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like. He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he fights. Then he is too strong. My prince must be tall, and slender, and dark – a graceful, bewitching prince. No, there is no danger of my falling in love with Martin Eden.”

“But have you thought about him?” her mother equivocated. “He can fall in love with you?”

“But he does – already,” she cried.

“It was to be expected,” Mrs. Morse said gently.

“I am happy with Martin Eden!” Ruth exclaimed. “No one ever loved me before – no man, I mean, in that way. And I like it. You think I am dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just how I feel.”

Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who was a bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-daughter. It was a holy hour for mother and daughter, and their eyes were wet as they talked on in the twilight.