Martin's idealized love for Ruth

Martin's idealized love for Ruth is the emotional force that transforms his first encounter with her into a vision of beauty, spiritual purity, and a life worth striving toward. It inspires him to pursue knowledge and remake himself, but it also places Ruth so far above ordinary human intimacy that his devotion initially obstructs the closeness it seeks. The changing distance between them—first magnified by his worship, then briefly narrowed by the stain of cherries on her lips—gives this love its central tension.

First Encounter and Intellectual Awakening

When Ruth speaks about poetry and literature, Martin is not merely impressed by what she knows. Her quick, confident talk opens a world of ideas and critical language that is unfamiliar to him, yet stimulates him. He watches her pale face while trying to follow her argument, and experiences intellectual life and beauty as discoveries joined in a single person. His love begins in this fusion: Ruth seems both someone to learn from and the living embodiment of what he has only begun to imagine.

The scene is also physical and uncomfortable. Martin grips the chair arms, conscious of his awkwardness, while Ruth’s knowledge and ease sharpen his sense of the gulf between them. His gaze becomes so fixed that she loses her place in the discussion. She is embarrassed and frightened by its intensity, yet also affected by it. Her social training warns her against the rough, working-class visitor, whose hands are lacerated and whose neck is chafed by unfamiliar linen; another part of her responds to him. The narration thus presents attraction crossing class boundaries before either character can fully understand what is happening.

From Attraction to Sacred Ideal

After the visit, Martin walks through the drizzle in a state of wonder, unbuttoning his vest and tearing the collar from his shirt as he replays the evening. He has felt Ruth’s hand in his and seen her eyes, but his imagination carries those impressions far beyond the ordinary physical encounter. He no longer regards her body as merely a body: he imagines it as the expression of a divine spirit. The contrast with his previous irreligion is decisive. A man who had believed there was no life beyond death now understands Ruth’s purity as evidence, to him, of an immortal soul.

That revelation quickly becomes a personal ambition. Martin believes himself unworthy of her and treats their meeting as accidental good fortune rather than something he has earned. Yet his humility turns into a vision of transformation: he imagines rising to share beautiful and noble things with her, in a spiritual companionship he cannot define. His desire is real, but he interprets it through reverence so completely that he recasts possession as a refined union of souls. Love gives his aspirations direction while making the object of those aspirations seem almost otherworldly.

Desire, Asymmetry, and a Purpose for Work

When Martin visits Ruth again, their talk ranges over the books he has borrowed, including Swinburne, whose poetry he loves, and Browning, whom he does not understand. Ruth guides the conversation and considers how she might help him. She feels pity and tenderness, but does not recognize her own growing attraction as love; she thinks of Martin as an unusual person with potential, and even understands her interest as philanthropic. Martin, by contrast, knows that he loves and desires her. The difference in their awareness makes the intimacy uneven: he experiences a consuming attachment where she has not yet named her feeling.

Ruth also changes how Martin reads poetry. A line he had scarcely noticed before becomes newly vivid, and he recognizes in it an image of a lover who could die upon a kiss. His longing for Ruth’s lips feels to him sacred rather than ordinary; even desire becomes part of the elevated romance he is constructing. The narration shows the divide between his interpretation and his bodily intensity: Martin does not realize that his ardent gaze is affecting Ruth, whose thoughts and speech are repeatedly interrupted by the warmth she senses in it.

As Martin’s studies and writing press upon his waking hours and even his sleep, his calls on Ruth become less frequent. One afternoon a week, however, he arrives late, often stays for dinner, and listens to music afterward. The contrast between Ruth’s household and his own makes these visits red-letter occasions. He leaves with a renewed resolve to climb, though the purpose is not ambition alone: despite his desire to create, he understands himself as a lover first and subordinates other aims to love. Ruth’s presence makes the world intellectually exciting, but, in his eyes, her existence is what makes it wondrous.

The Cherries and the Narrowing Gulf

Martin’s idealization also keeps Ruth at a distance. As he acquires knowledge and language, he can speak to her more readily and discover interests they share; still, he cannot approach her as a lover. He has made her so holy and spiritual that he cannot imagine her as having physical kinship with him. The very love that makes him long for closeness tells him that closeness is impossible.

That barrier shifts when Ruth reads aloud from The Princess after they have eaten cherries. Martin notices the dark stain on her lips. The sight breaks, for a moment, the image of a being set apart: her lips are flesh, subject to the same ordinary conditions as his. The realization startles him and makes him tremble at the possibility of approaching her as a man might approach a woman. He nearly reaches for her, but Ruth pauses, smiles, and teases him for not following the reading. She has not understood what has passed through his mind; abashed by that innocence, he retreats from the impulse, and the imagined bridge between them seems to collapse.

Yet the incident permanently narrows the gulf in Martin’s imagination. The cherries have made Ruth human without making her less precious to him. He can now conceive that someone who experiences hunger, thirst, heat, and cold might also love a man—and that he might become that man. His response is to turn love back into a demand upon himself: he must make good and make himself worthy. In these scenes, idealized love is both a source of purpose and a barrier to intimacy. Its movement is not simply from worship to desire, but from an impossible spiritual distance toward the hope of a relationship between two embodied people.