"I did not want to say it, but he is not. He is rough, brutal, strong - too strong. He has not - "
She hesitated and could not go on. It was a new experience, talking over such matters with her mother. And again her mother completed her thought for her.
"He has not lived a clean life, is what you wanted to say."
Again Ruth nodded, and again a blush mantled her face.
"It is just that," she said. "It has not been his fault, but he has played much with - "
"With pitch?"
"Yes, with pitch. And he frightens me. Sometimes I am positively in terror of him, when he talks in that free and easy way of the things he has done - as if they did not matter. They do matter, don't they?"
They sat with their arms twined around each other, and in the pause her mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on.
"But I am interested in him dreadfully," she continued. "In a way 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 I have taken for a plaything, like some of the 'frat' girls, and he is tugging hard, and showing his teeth, and threatening to break loose."
Again 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 in - in the other way. You see, I have been thinking. He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he has fought with his fists (he has told me so, and he likes it; he says so). He is all that a man should not be - a man I would want for my - " her voice sank very low - "husband.
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 failing in love with Martin Eden. It would be the worst fate that could befall me."
"But it is not that that I spoke about," her mother equivocated.
"Have you thought about him? He is so ineligible in every way, you know, and suppose he should come to love you?"
"But he does - already," she cried.
"It was to be expected," Mrs. Morse said gently. "How could it be otherwise with any one who knew you?"
"Olney hates me!" she exclaimed passionately. "And I hate Olney.
I feel always like a cat when he is around. I feel that I must be nasty to him, and even when I don't happen to feel that way, why, he's nasty to me, anyway. But I am happy with Martin Eden. No one ever loved me before - no man, I mean, in that way. And it is sweet to be loved - that way. You know what I mean, mother dear.
It is sweet to feel that you are really and truly a woman." She buried her face in her mother's lap, sobbing. "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. The experiment had succeeded. The strange void in Ruth's nature had been filled, and filled without danger or penalty. This rough sailor-fellow had been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made her conscious of her womanhood.
