Jack London

knew, now, that he had not really loved her. It was an idealized Ruth he had loved, an ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright and luminous spirit of his love-poems. The real bourgeois Ruth, with all the bourgeois failings and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois psychology in her mind, he had never loved.

And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.

For what reason under the sun do men and women come together if not for the exchange of the best that is in them? And the best that is in them is what they are interested in, the thing by which they make their living, the thing they’ve specialized on and sat up days and nights over, and even dreamed about.

he was manifestly out of place

The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. "He understands," was his thought. "He’ll see me through all right."

smacked of the sea

"Ruth." It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with. Each time he murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall with a golden radiance. This radiance did not stop at the wall. It extended on into infinity, and through its golden depths his soul went questing after hers. The best that was in him was out in splendid flood. The very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him better, and made him want to be better.

half­breed be­gan his rise in Buck’s es­ti­ma­tion.

the thing which pro­jected their strug­gle for supremacy far into the fu­ture, past many a weary mile of trail and toil.

“Ah, my frien’s,” he said softly, “mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sa­credam! Wot you t’ink, eh, Per­rault?