She even considered it the hopeful side of the situation, believing that sooner or later it would arouse him and compel him to abandon his writing.
Ruth never read hunger in Martin's face, which had grown lean and had enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks.

In fact, she marked the change in his face with satisfaction.

It seemed to refine him, to remove from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-like vigor that lured her while she detested it.

Sometimes, when with her, she noted an unusual brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it made him appear more the poet and the scholar--the things he would have liked to be and which she would have liked him to be.

But Maria Silva read a different tale in the hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted the changes in them from day to day, by them following the ebb and flow of his fortunes.