 strong. He wanted to be great in the world's eyes: to
make good, as he expressed it, in order that the woman he loved should be proud
of him and deem him worthy.
    As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving her was
to him sufficient wage. And more than beauty he loved Ruth. He considered love
the finest thing in the world. It was love that had worked the revolution in
him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and an artist; therefore,
to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater than learning and
artistry, was love. Already he had discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth's,
just as it went beyond the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father.
In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her
bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or
so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world
and art and life that she could never hope to possess.
    All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her love
for him. Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover for him to
besmirch love with criticism. What did love have to do with Ruth's divergent
views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or equal suffrage? They were
mental processes, but love was beyond reason; it was superrational. He could not
belittle love. He worshipped it. Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the
valley-land of reason. It was a sublimated condition of existence, the topmost
peak of living, and it came rarely. Thanks to the school of scientific
philosophers he favored, he knew the biological significance of love; but by a
refined process of the same scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that
the human organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be
questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life. Thus, he
considered the lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a delight to him to
think of God's own mad lover, rising above the things of earth, above wealth and
judgment, public opinion and applause, rising above life itself and dying on a
kiss.
    Much of this Martin had already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned out
later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he went to
see Ruth, and living like a Spartan.
