When I was starving?
When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an artist, the same Martin Eden?
That’s the question I’ve been propounding to myself for many a day-not concerning you merely, but concerning everybody.
You see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent appreciation in value compels me constantly to reassure myself on that point.
I’ve got the same flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and toes.
I am the same.
I have not developed any new strength nor virtue.
My brain is the same old brain.
I haven’t made even one new generalization on literature or philosophy.
I am personally of the same value that I was when nobody wanted me.
And what is puzzling me is why they want me now.
Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself is the same old self they did not want.
Then they must want me for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that is not I!
Shall I tell you what that something is?
It is for the recognition I have received.
That recognition is not I.
It resides in the minds of others.
Then again for the money I have earned and am earning.
But that money is not I.
It resides in banks and in the pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry.
And is it for that, for the recognition and the money, that you now want me?"
"You are breaking my heart," she sobbed. "You know I love you, that I am here because I love you."
"I am afraid you don’t see my point," he said gently. "What I mean is: if you love me, how does it happen that you love me now so much more than you did when your love was weak enough to deny me?"
"Forget and forgive," she cried passionately. "I loved you all the time, remember that, and I am here, now, in your arms."
"I’m afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to weigh your love and find out what manner of thing it is."
She withdrew herself from his arms, sat upright, and looked at him long and searchingly.
She was about to speak, then faltered and changed her mind.
"You see, it appears this way to me," he went on. "When I was all that I am now, nobody out of my own class seemed to care for me.
When my books were all written, no one who had read the manuscripts seemed to care for them.
In point of fact, because of the stuff I had written they seemed to care even less for me.
In writing the stuff it seemed that I had committed acts that were, to say the least, derogatory.
‘Get a job,’ everybody said."
She made a movement of dissent.
"Yes, yes," he said; "except in your case you told me to get a position.
The homely word job , like much that I have written, offends you.
It is brutal.
But I assure you it was no less brutal to me when everybody I knew recommended it to me as they would recommend right conduct to an immoral creature.
But to return.
The publication of what I had written, and the public notice I received, wrought a change in the fibre of your love.
Martin Eden, with his work all performed, you would not marry.
Your love for him was not strong enough to enable you to marry him.
But your love is now strong enough, and I cannot avoid the conclusion that its strength arises from the publication and the public notice.
In your case I do not mention royalties, though I am certain that they apply to the change wrought in your mother and father.
Of course, all this is not flattering to me.
But worst of all, it makes me question love, sacred love.
Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and public notice?
It would seem so.
I have sat and thought upon it till my head went around."
"Poor, dear head." She reached up a hand and passed the fingers soothingly through his hair. "Let it go around no more.
Let us begin anew, now.