have
any sympathy with revolutionary ideas. She had always been used to music, and
she had enjoyed opera ever since she was a child, and all her world had enjoyed
it, too. Then by what right did Martin Eden emerge, as he had so recently
emerged, from his rag-time and working-class songs, and pass judgment on the
world's music? She was vexed with him, and as she walked beside him she had a
vague feeling of outrage. At the best, in her most charitable frame of mind, she
considered the statement of his views to be a caprice, an erratic and
uncalled-for prank. But when he took her in his arms at the door and kissed her
good night in tender lover-fashion, she forgot everything in the outrush of her
own love to him. And later, on a sleepless pillow, she puzzled, as she had often
puzzled of late, as to how it was that she loved so strange a man, and loved him
despite the disapproval of her people.
    And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat hammered
out an essay to which he gave the title, »The Philosophy of Illusion.« A stamp
started it on its travels, but it was destined to receive many stamps and to be
started on many travels in the months that followed.
 

                                  Chapter XXV

Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to her. Poverty, to
Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of existence. That was her
total knowledge on the subject. She knew Martin was poor, and his condition she
associated in her mind with the boyhood of Abraham Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and
of other men who had become successes. Also, while aware that poverty was
anything but delectable, she had a comfortable middle-class feeling that poverty
was salutary, that it was a sharp spur that urged on to success all men who were
not degraded and hopeless drudges. So that her knowledge that Martin was so poor
that he had pawned his watch and overcoat did not disturb her. She even
considered it the hopeful side of the situation, believing that sooner or later
it would arouse him and compel him to abandon his writing.
    Ruth never read hunger in Martin's face, which had grown lean and had
enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks. In fact, she marked the change in his
face with satisfaction. It seemed to refine him, to remove from him much of the
dross of flesh and the too animal-like vigor that