into Oakland. He was a winter late in redeeming his promise,
but redeemed it was, for the last, least Silva got a pair of shoes, as well as
Maria herself. Also, there were horns, and dolls, and toys of various sorts, and
parcels and bundles of candies and nuts that filled the arms of all the Silvas
to overflowing.
    It was with this extraordinary procession trooping at his and Maria's heels
into a confectioner's in quest of the biggest candy-cane ever made, that he
encountered Ruth and her mother. Mrs. Morse was shocked. Even Ruth was hurt, for
she had some regard for appearances, and her lover, cheek by jowl with Maria, at
the head of that army of Portuguese ragamuffins, was not a pretty sight. But it
was not that which hurt so much as what she took to be his lack of pride and
self-respect. Further, and keenest of all, she read into the incident the
impossibility of his living down his working-class origin. There was stigma
enough in the fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the face of the world
- her world - was going too far. Though her engagement to Martin had been kept
secret, their long intimacy had not been unproductive of gossip; and in the
shop, glancing covertly at her lover and his following, had been several of her
acquaintances. She lacked the easy largeness of Martin and could not rise
superior to her environment. She had been hurt to the quick, and her sensitive
nature was quivering with the shame of it. So it was, when Martin arrived later
in the day, that he kept her present in his breast-pocket, deferring the giving
of it to a more propitious occasion. Ruth in tears - passionate, angry tears -
was a revelation to him. The spectacle of her suffering convinced him that he
had been a brute, yet in the soul of him he could not see how nor why. It never
entered his head to be ashamed of those he knew, and to take the Silvas out to a
Christmas treat could in no way, so it seemed to him, show lack of consideration
for Ruth. On the other hand, he did see Ruth's point of view, after she had
explained it; and he looked upon it as a feminine weakness, such as afflicted
all women and the best of women.
 

                                 Chapter XXXVI

»Come on, - I'll show you the real dirt,« Brissenden said to him, one evening in
January.
    They had dined together in