facing her, overwhelmed with consciousness of the awkward figure he was
cutting. This was a new experience for him. All his life, up to then,
he had been unaware of being either graceful or awkward. Such thoughts
of self had never entered his mind. He sat down gingerly on the edge of
the chair, greatly worried by his hands. They were in the way wherever
he put them. Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his
exit with longing eyes. He felt lost, alone there in the room with that
pale spirit of a woman. There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for
drinks, no small boy to send around the corner for a can of beer and by
means of that social fluid start the amenities of friendship flowing.

"You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden," the girl was saying. "How
did it happen? I am sure it must have been some adventure."

"A Mexican with a knife, miss," he answered, moistening his parched lips
and clearing hip throat. "It was just a fight. After I got the knife
away, he tried to bite off my nose."

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot,
starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the
sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the
distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's
face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the
steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the
two bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over
and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling
of a guitar. Such was the picture, and he thrilled to the memory of it,
wondering if the man could paint it who had painted the pilot-schooner on
the wall. The white beach, the stars, and the lights of the sugar
steamers would look great, he thought, and midway on the sand the dark