upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his head aside
from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and of which
she had not been aware.




CHAPTER VIII


Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar,
reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that
caught his fancy. Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the
Lotus Club wondered what had become of him and worried Jim with
questions, and some of the fellows who put on the glove at Riley's were
glad that Martin came no more. He made another discovery of treasure-
trove in the library. As the grammar had shown him the tie-ribs of
language, so that book showed him the tie-ribs of poetry, and he began to
learn metre and construction and form, beneath the beauty he loved
finding the why and wherefore of that beauty. Another modern book he
found treated poetry as a representative art, treated it exhaustively,
with copious illustrations from the best in literature. Never had he
read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books. And his fresh
mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity of desire,
gripped hold of what he read with a virility unusual to the student mind.

When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had
known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and
harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this
new world and expanded. His mind made for unity, and he was surprised