 over him. Why? Because Spencer is taking him somewhere.
Spencer couldn't take me anywhere, nor you. We haven't got anywhere to go.
You'll get married some day, and I'll have nothing to do but keep track of the
lawyers and business agents who will take care of the money my father's going to
leave me.«
    Olney got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting shot.
    »You leave Martin alone, Ruth. He knows what's best for himself. Look at
what he's done already. He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed of myself.
He knows more now about the world, and life, and man's place, and all the rest,
than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for that matter, and in spite of all
our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and culture.«
    »But Ruth is my teacher,« Martin answered chivalrously. »She is responsible
for what little I have learned.«
    »Rats!« Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious. »I suppose
you'll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her recommendation - only you
didn't. And she doesn't know anything more about Darwin and evolution than I do
about King Solomon's mines. What's that jawbreaker definition about something or
other, of Spencer's, that you sprang on us the other day - that indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity thing? Spring it on her, and see if she understands a
word of it. That isn't culture, you see. Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin,
Martin, I won't have any respect for you.«
    And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of an
irk in it as well. It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments
of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things
that were stirring in him - with the grip upon life that was even then crooking
his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and
with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all. He likened himself to a
poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty,
stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue
of his brethren in the new land. And so with him. He was alive, painfully alive,
to
