In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune.  Immediately on recovering his clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he could not refrain from jingling the little handful of silver in his pocket.  He had been so long without money that, like a rescued starving man who cannot let the unconsumed food out of his sight, Martin could not keep his hand off the silver.  He was not mean, nor avaricious, but the money meant more than so many dollars and cents.  It stood for success, and the eagles stamped upon the coins were to him so many winged victories.

It came to him insensibly that it was a very good world.  It certainly appeared more beautiful to him.  For weeks it had been a very dull and sombre world; but now, with nearly all debts paid, three dollars jingling in his pocket, and in his mind the consciousness of success, the sun shone bright and warm, and even a rain-squall that soaked unprepared pedestrians seemed a merry happening to him.  When he starved, his thoughts had dwelt often upon the thousands he knew were starving the world over; but now that he was feasted full, the fact of the thousands starving was no longer pregnant in his brain.  He forgot about them, and, being in love, remembered the countless lovers in the world.  Without deliberately thinking about it, motifs for love-lyrics began to agitate his brain.  Swept away by the creative impulse, he got off the electric car, without vexation, two blocks beyond his crossing.

He found a number of persons in the Morse home.  Ruth’s two girl-cousins were visiting her from San Rafael, and Mrs. Morse, under pretext of entertaining them, was pursuing her plan of surrounding Ruth with young people.  The campaign had begun during Martin’s enforced absence, and was already in full swing.  She was making a point of having at the house men who were doing things.  Thus, in addition to the cousins Dorothy and Florence, Martin encountered two university professors, one of Latin, the other of English; a young army officer just back from the Philippines, one-time school-mate of Ruth’s; a young fellow named Melville, private secretary to Joseph Perkins, head of the San Francisco Trust Company; and finally of the men, a live bank cashier, Charles Hapgood, a youngish man of thirty-five, graduate of Stanford University, member of the Nile Club and the Unity Club, and a conservative speaker for the Republican Party during campaigns—­in short, a rising young man in every way.  Among the women was one who painted portraits, another who was a professional musician, and still another who possessed the degree of Doctor of Sociology and who was locally famous for her social settlement work in the slums of San Francisco.  But the women did not count for much in Mrs. Morse’s plan.  At the best, they were necessary accessories.  The men who did things must be drawn to the house somehow.

“Don’t get excited when you talk,” Ruth admonished Martin, before the ordeal of introduction began.