Also, there was Moses Rosen, the business-manager. Moses was short,
and wore a large diamond ring, and he also was a specialist in the
phenomena of "Genius". He studied them from the point of view of the
box-office, and his tests were quite as definite as those of the
psychological laboratory. There came to Moses an endless stream of
prodigies, all of them having long hair and picturesque aspects, and
talking rapidly and rolling their eyes; the problem was to determine
which of them had the faculty of true Genius, which not only talked
rapidly and rolled its eyes, but also had the power of causing money
to flow in through a box-office window.

In this case Moses felt that the prospects were good; the only
trouble being that the prodigy intended to render a _concerto_ by a
strange composer--a stormy and unconventional thing which would
annoy the critics. Moses suggested something that was "classic"; and
agreed with Mrs. Hartman that there ought to be something
corresponding to "good form" in music.

Section 3. So all these strange creatures were poking and peering
and smelling about the "Genius"; and meanwhile, there came at
intervals faint strains of music from a distant room. At last Lloyd
Hartman entered; beautiful, pale and sensitive--a haunted boy, and
the most haunting figure that had yet come to Thyrsis' imagination.
Also, it was the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken; for
the character had come to him, not as a formula or a collection of
phrases, but as an intuition, a part of his own soul; and he would
work out a scene a score of times, finding words to phrase it, and
then rejecting them. By what speeches could he give his sense of the
gulf that lay between Lloyd and the people about him? For this boy
could not cope with them in argument, he would have no mastery of
the world of facts. He must be without any touch of sophistication,
of cynicism; and yet, when he spoke to them, it must be clear that
he knew them for different beings from himself. He would go with
them meekly; but one would feel that it was because his path lay in
their direction. When the point came that their ways parted, he
would go his own way; and just there lay the seed of the
tragi-comedy.

The family gathers about him, and he answers their questions. He
will wear the kind of tie that his sister prefers, and they may set
any date they please for the _musicales_ at home. He hears the
"copy" which Moses has prepared for his advertisements; and then he
sits, absent-minded, while they talk about him. Music is in his
thoughts, and gradually it steals into his aspect and the gestures
of his hand. They watch him, and a pall comes over them: until at
last the mother exclaims that he makes her nervous, and leads the
family off.

Then Miss Arnold is announced--Helena Arnold, who has been
recommended as accompanist at the great concert. She is young and
beautiful; and the two go into the next room to play, while the
professors remain to talk over this new complication.

Prof. von Arne, of course, lays especial emphasis upon the
sex-element in psychopathology; he and Reminitsky have talked the
subject out many years ago, and adopted a definite course of action.
The abnormalities incidental to sex-repression were innumerable, and
for the most part destructive; but there could be no question that
all the more striking phenomena of the neurosis called "Genius" were
greatly increased in their intensity by this means. So, in dealing
with his pupils, and especially with a prodigy like young Hartman,
Prof. Reminitsky would call into service all the paraphernalia of
religious mysticism; teaching his pupil to regard woman as the
object of exalted adoration, a being too holy to be attained to even
in thought. And now, of course, when the proposed accompanist turns
out to be a decidedly alluring young female, it is necessary to take
careful heed.

Meanwhile from the distance come bursts of wild music; and at last
Helena returns--pale, and deeply agitated. "It is that _concerto!_"
she says, and then asks to be excused from talking. Lloyd comes, and
stands by the door watching her. When his teacher begins to open
business negotiations, he asks him abruptly to leave them alone.

Helena asks, "Who wrote that music?" He tells her a ghastly story of
a titan soul who starved in a garret and shot himself, crushed by
the mockery of the world.

"I might have saved him!" the boy exclaims. "I was so busy with the
music I forgot the man!"

They talk about this epoch-making _concerto_, and how Lloyd means to
force it upon the public. "And you shall play it with me!" he
exclaims. "You are the first that has ever understood it!"

"I cannot play it!" she protests; to which he answers, "It was like
his voice come back from the grave!" And so we see these two souls
cast into the crucible together.

Section 4. The second act showed the aftermath of the great concert,
and took place in the drawing-room of the Hartman family's
apartment, at four o'clock in the morning. We see Moses and the two
professors, who have not been able to tear themselves away;
dishevelled, _distrait_, wild with vexation, they pace about and
lament. Failure, utter ruin confronts them--the structure of their
hopes lies in the dust! They blame it all on "that woman"--and
members of the family concur in this. It was she who kept Lloyd to
his resolve to play that mad _concerto;_ and then, to cast aside all
the master had taught them, all the results of weeks of
drilling--and to play it in that frantic, demonic fashion. Now the
men await the morning papers, which will bring them the verdict of
"the world"; and they shudder with the foreknowledge of what that
verdict will be.

Lloyd and Helena enter. They have been walking for hours, and have
not been thinking of "the world". They listen, half-heeding, to the
protests and laments; they could not help it, they explain--the
music took hold of them.

The two professors go off to get the papers, and Moses goes into the
next room to rest; after which it becomes clear to the audience that
Lloyd and Helena are fighting the sex-duel.

"You do not care about people," she is saying, sombrely.

To which his reply is, "It is not to be found in people."

"And yet from people it must come!" she insists.

He answers, "They do not even know what I mean; and they have no
humility."

"It is a problem," Lloyd continues, after a pause. "Shall one go on
alone, or wait and bring others with him?--You have brought that
problem into my life."

She answers to this, "I cannot see how my love will hinder you."

He replies, "If you love _me_, who will love my art?"

So it goes--until the professors return with their freight of the
world's Philistinism. And here came a scene, over which Thyrsis
shook for many a day with merriment. The accounts of the concert are
read; Moses awakens and comes in; and as the agony increases, the
members of the family appear, one by one, clad in their
dressing-gowns, and adding their lamentations to the chorus. Gone is
all the prestige of the two professors, gone all the profits of
Moses, gone all the visions of social triumphs in the city of the
middle West!

To all of which uproar the two listen patiently; until at last the
mother, in a transport of vexation, turns upon Helena, and accuses
her of ensnaring the boy. And then--the climax of the scene--Lloyd
springs up; all that Genius in him, which has so far gone into
music, turns now into rage and scorn. He pictures these
people--pawing over his inspiration with their unclean
hands--peering at it, weighing it, chaffering over it--taking it
into the market-place to be hawked about. He shows them what they
are, and what that "world" is, to which they would offer his muse as
a whore. And then at the climax of his speech, as he is waving his
violin in the air, the Herr Prof. von Arne ventures to put in a
word; and the boy whirls upon him, and brings down the three
thousand-dollar treasure upon the eminent psychiatrist's head!

The third act, which was the hardest of all to write, was to take
place in a garret. Lloyd has gone away alone, and three years have
passed, and now he lies dying of a wasting disease. Helena has come
to him again--and still they are fighting the duel. "A woman will do
anything for a man but renounce him," says Lloyd; and she cannot
understand this fierce instinct of his.

She has come and found him; and he lies gasping for breath, and
speaking in broken sentences. Yet he will not have her bring grief
into his chamber; he has fought his way through grief, and through
hatred and contempt, and now he lies at peace upon the bosom of
nature. No longer is he wrapped up in his own vision; he has learned
from the million suns in the sky and the million trees of the
forest. He tells her that the thing called "Genius" springs
ceaselessly from the heart of life.

He has cast out fear; and with it he has cast out love. "What are
you?" he asks. "What am I?" And he sets forth in blazing words his
vision of the soul, which is as a flash of light in a raindrop, and
yet one with the eternal process. As the fruit of his life he leaves
one symphony in manuscript, and some pages of writing in which he
has summed up his faith. That is enough, he says--that is victory;
for that he fled away, and killed his love.

The two professors come, having learned that Lloyd is dying. But
even they cannot divert him. He tells von Arne that his learning
will submit itself, and that scientists will be as gardeners,
tending the young flowers of faith. His mother and father come, and
he whispers that even for them there is hope--that in the deepest
mire of respectability the spark of the soul still glows. His mother
bursts into weeping by his bed, and he tells her that even from the
dungeon of pride there may be deliverance. So he sends them all away
to pray.

Then Helena sits at the piano and plays a few bars of that sonata of
Beethoven's which is an utterance of most poignant grief, and which
some publisher has cruelly misnamed the "Moonlight". And after long
silence, the dying man communes with his muse. A light suffuses the
room, and he whispers, "Take thine own time; for the seeds of thy
glories are planted in the hearts of men!"

Section 6. Over these things Thyrsis would work for six hours at a
stretch, sitting without moving a muscle; for days and nights he
would wander about at random in the woods. He ate irregularly, of
such things as he could put his hands upon; and sleep fled from him
like a mistress spurned. When, after a couple of months, he had
finished the task, there was an incessant throbbing in his forehead,
and--alas for the sudden tumble from the heights of Parnassus!--he
had lost almost entirely the power of digesting food.

But the play was done. He sent it off to be copied, and wrote paeans
of thanksgiving to Corydon. Once more he had a weapon, newly-forged
and sharpened, wherewith to pierce that tough hide of the world!

There remained the practical question: What did one do when he had a
play completed? What was the first step to be taken? Thyrsis
pondered the problem for several days; and then, as chance would
have it, his eye was caught by a newspaper paragraph to the effect
that "Ethelynda Lewis, the popular _comГ©dienne_, is to be starred in
a serious drama next season, under the management of Robertson
Jones. Miss Lewis's play has not yet been selected." Now, as it
happened, "Ethelynda Lewis" had been on the play-bill of "The
Princess of Prague", that tragic "musical comedy" to which Thyrsis
had been taken; but he never noticed the names of actors and
actresses, and had no suspicions. He sent his manuscript to this
future star; and a week later came a note, written on scented
monogram paper in a tall and distinguished chirography,
acknowledging the receipt of his play and promising to read it.

Then Thyrsis turned to attack the manuscripts which had been
accumulating while he was writing. They were coming more frequently
now--apparently Mr. Ardsley liked his work. To Corydon, who had gone
to the country with her parents, he wrote that he was getting some
money ahead, and so she might join him before long.

This brought him a deluge of letters; and it forced him to another
swift descent into the world of reality. "I have told you nothing of
my sufferings," wrote Corydon. "At least a score of times I have
written you long letters and then torn them up, saying that your
work must not be disturbed. But oh, Thyrsis, I do not think I can
stand it much longer! Can you imagine what it means to be shut up in
a boarding-house, without one living soul to understand about me?"

She would go on to tell of her griefs and humiliations, her longings
and rages and despairs. Then, too, Cedric was not growing as he
should. "He is beautiful," she wrote, "and every one loves him. But
he makes not the least attempt to sit up, and I am very much
worried. I fear that I ought not to go on nursing him--I am too
nervous to eat as I should. And then I think of the winter, and that
we may still be separated, and I do not see how I am to stand it. It
is as if I were in a prison. I think of you, and I cannot make you
real to me."

To all of which Thyrsis could only reply with vague hopes--and then
go away for a tramp in the forest, and call to his soul for new
courage. He had still troubles enough of his own. For one thing, the
fiend in his stomach was not to be exorcised by any spell he knew.
It was all very picturesque to portray one's hero as dying of
disease; but in reality it was not at all satisfactory. Thyrsis did
not die, he merely ate a bowl of bread and milk, and then went about
for several hours, feeling as if there were a football blown up
inside of him.

He had a touching faith in the medical profession in those days, and
whenever there was anything wrong with him, he would turn the
problem over to a doctor and his soul would be at rest. In this case
the doctor told him that he had dyspepsia--not a very difficult
diagnosis--and gave him a bottle full of a red liquid to be taken
after meals. To Thyrsis this seemed an example of the marvels of
science, of the adjustment of means to ends; for behold, when he had
taken the red liquid, the bread and milk disappeared as if by magic!
And he might go on and eat anything else--if there was trouble, he
had only to take more of the red liquid! So he plunged into work on
a pot-boiler, and wrote Corydon to be of cheer, that the dawn was
breaking.

Section 7. Corydon, in the meantime, had received a copy of his
play; and he was surprised at the effect it had upon her. "It is
marvellous," she wrote; "it is like a blaze of lightning from one
end to the other. And yet, much as I rejoice in its power, the main
feeling it brought me was of anguish; for it seemed to me as if in
this play you had spoken out of your inmost soul. Can it be that you
are really chafing against the bond of our love? That you feel that
I have hold of you and cling to you; and that you resent it, and
shrink from me? Oh Thyrsis, what can I do? Shall I bid you go, and
blot the thought of you from my mind? Is that what you truly want?
'A woman will do anything for a man but renounce him!' Did you not
shudder for me when you wrote those words?

"It is two o'clock in the morning, and so far I have not been able
to sleep. I have lain awake with torturing thoughts; and then the
baby wakened up, and I had to put him to sleep again--any
indisposition of mine always affects him. I am sitting on the floor
at the foot of the bed, writing with a candle; and hoping to get
myself sufficiently exhausted, so that I shall no longer lie awake.

"Go and find your vision over my corpse, and may God bless you!...I
wrote that hours ago, and I tried to mean it. I try to tell myself
that I will take the child and go away, and crush my own hopes and
yearnings, and give my life to him. But no--I cannot, I cannot! It
is perfectly futile for me to think of that--I crave for life, and
I cannot give up. There is that in me that will never yield, that
will take no refusal. Sometimes I see myself as a woman of seventy,
still seeking my life. Do you not realize that? I feel that I shall
never grow old!

"How strange a thing it is, Thyrsis, that you and I, who might do so
much with so little chance, should have no chance at all. I read of
other poets and their wives--at least they managed to have a hut on
some hillside, and they did not absolutely starve.

"I am tired now; perhaps I can sleep. But I will tell you something,
Thyrsis--does it sound so very foolish? Not only will I never grow
old, but I will never give up your love! Yes, some day you will find
out how to seek your vision in spite of the fact that I am your
wife!"

Section 8. Another day, there would be moods of peace, and even of
merriment; it was always like putting one's hand into a grab-bag, to
open a new letter from Corydon. In after years he would read them,
and strange were the memories they brought!

"My Thyrsis," she wrote: "I have been reading a story of Heine in
Zangwill's "Dreamers of the Ghetto". I did not know about Heine. He
loved and married a sweet little woman of the people--Mathilde--who
didn't appreciate his writings. I am not only going to love you, but
I am going to appreciate your writings! Some day I am going to be
educated--and won't it be fine when I am educated?

"I keep very busy, but I have not so much time as I had last summer.
I live almost all my life in hope--the present is nothing. I think I
get more strength by gazing at my baby than in any other way. I
wonder if I can ever infuse into him my inspiration and my desire.
It is wonderfully exciting to me to think of what a free soul could
do, if it possessed my spirit and my dreams. Ah, even you don't
know! I smile to myself when I think how surprised you might some
day be! Oh, my baby, my baby, surely you will not fail me--little
soul that is to be. This is what I say to him, and then I squeeze
him in ecstasy, and he coughs up his milk. Dear funny little thing,
that is so pleased with a red, white and blue rattle. At present he
is grinning at it ecstatically--and he is truly most horribly
cunning. His favorite expression is 'Ah-boo, ah-boo'; and is not
that just _too_ bright? Everybody tries to spoil him--even a
twelve-year-old boy here wanted to kiss him. And wonder of wonders,
he has two teeth appearing in his lower gums! Poor me--he bites hard
enough as he is."

And then again:

"My Beloved: I am sitting with my candle once more. It is too hot
for a lamp. I have been reading 'Paradise Lost', and truly I am
astonished that it is so beautiful. Also I have been reading a book
about Unitarianism, and I did not know that such things had been
written. But I think it is hardly worth while to call one's self a
Unitarian. I was thinking that I will go back and read the Bible
through. I would not mind, if I knew I did not have to believe it.

"Also; this week, I read 'Paul and Virginia'. Oh, do not write
anything to me about our meeting, until you are sure it can be! It
breaks my heart.

"Did it ever occur to you that we might embark for the tropics? We'd
have a hut, and I might learn to raise fruits and vegetables. I sigh
for some verdant isle--and I am not joking. We might find some place
where steamers came now and then, and some one in New York could
attend to your manuscripts.

"To-night I was trying to put my baby to sleep and he wouldn't go,
but just lay in my lap and kicked and grinned. I tried to coax him
to go to sleep, but if I was the least bit impatient he'd begin to
cry. And then he'd grin at me so roguishly, as if to say, 'Let's
play before I go to sleep!' Finally I looked right at him and said,
'Now, you have played long enough, and I wish you to be a good boy
and go to sleep!' And then he laughed, and I put him on his side and
he went to sleep! Wasn't that bright for a baby just seven months
old?

"I think I write you much more interesting letters than you write
me. To be sure I have no books into which to put my thoughts. Also,
I have a great deal of time to compose letters to you; Cedric wakes
me up so much in the night, and often I cannot go to sleep again. It
plays havoc with me as a rule; and yet sometimes, when I'm not too
exhausted, there is a certain joy in watching by the dim candle
light the rosy upturned face and the little groping mouth. Oh
Thyrsis, he is all mine and yours, and we must make him glad he was
borned, mustn't we?"

Section 9. Such letters would come at a time when Thyrsis was almost
prostrated with exhaustion; and great waves of loneliness and
yearning would sweep over him. Ah God, what a fate it was--to labor
as he labored, and then to have no means of recreation or respite,
no hand to smooth his forehead, no voice to whisper solace! Who
could know the tragedy of that aspect of his life?

There came one day an incident that almost broke his heart. Down the
lake came a private yacht, beautiful and swift, clean as a new
penny, its bronze and white paint glistening in the sunlight. It
anchored not far out from the point where Thyrsis camped, and a boat
put off, and from it three young girls stepped ashore. They were
slender and graceful, clad all in white--as spotless as the vessel
itself, and glowing with health and joyfulness. They cast shy
glances at the tent, and asked Thyrsis to direct them to the nearest
farm-house; he watched them disappear through the woods, and saw
them return with a basket of fruit.

It was just at sunset, and there was a new moon in the sky, and the
evening star trembled upon the bosom of the waters. There in the
magic stillness lay the vessel--and suddenly came the sounds of a
guitar, and of young voices singing. Wonderful to tell, they sang
--not "ragtime" and "college songs," but the chorus of the
"Rheintoechter," and Schubert's "Auf dem Wasser zu singen", and
other music, unknown to Thyrsis, exquisite almost beyond enduring.
It pierced him to the heart; he sat with his hands clenched, and
every nerve of him a-quiver, and the hot tears raining down his
cheeks. It was loveliness not of this earth, it was an apparition;
that presence which had been haunting him ever since he had come to
this spot--

   "So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
        Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
        And hear old Triton blow his wreathГ©d horn."

The music died away, and rose again; and the deeps of his spirit
were opened, and ecstasy and grief welled up together within him.
Then he made out that the anchor was being lifted; and he was
tempted to spring up and cry out to them to stay. But no--what did
they know of him? What would they care about him? So he crouched by
the bank, drinking greedily the precious notes; and as the yacht
with its gleaming lights stole away into the twilight, all the
poet's soul went yearning with it. Still he could hear the faint
strains swelling--

   "Blow, blow, breathe and blow,
    Wind of the western sea!"

He sat with his face hidden in his hands, shuddering. Here he was,
wrestling in the pit with sickness and despair--and there above him
were the heights of art. If only he could live with such music, what
prodigies could he not perform. And they who possessed it--did it
mean to them what it meant to him? They who had everything that life
could offer--music and art, freedom and beauty and health--all the
treasures of life as their birthright--had they never a thought of
those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the galleys of their
pleasure-craft?

Thyrsis was always coming upon some aspect of this thing called
Privilege. Corydon had suggested that there might be some work that
she could do at home; and so one day he was looking over the
advertisements in a newspaper, and came upon a composition by a man
who was seeking a governess for his three children. It was written
in a style all its own; it revealed a person accustomed to specify
exactly what he wanted, and it occupied three or four inches, as if
symbolic of the fact that he did not consider expense. He described
the life of his children; they had servants and a tutor to attend to
their physical and mental needs, and the father now sought a friend
and, companion, to take charge of their spiritual and social
development. The specifications evoked a picture of an establishment,
in which all the community's resources, all the sciences and arts of
civilization, were set at work to create joy and power for three
young people. What a contrast it made with the care that little Cedric
was getting, as revealed in his mother's letters!

Thyrsis could see in his mind's eye the master and provider of this
establishment. How well he knew the type--how often had he sat in
some quiet corner and listened while it revealed itself. A man alert
and aggressive; immaculate in appearance as the latest fashion-plate,
and overlaid with a veneer of culture--yet underneath it still the
predatory talons, the soul of the hawk. He was a "practical" man;
that is, he understood profit. He was trained to see where profit
lay, and swift to seize upon it. As a business-man he ruled labor,
and crushed his competitors, and directed legislatures and political
machines; as a lawyer he protected his kind from attack, as a judge
he bent the law to the ends of greed. So he lived in palaces, and
travelled about in private-cars and yachts, and had servants and
governesses for his children, and valets and secretaries to attend
himself. And whenever by any chance he got a glimpse of Thyrsis' soul,
how he hated it! On the other hand, to Thyrsis he was a portent of
terror. He ruled in every field of human activity; and yet one saw
that if his rule continued, it would mean the destruction of civilization!
Whenever Thyrsis met one of these men, whether in imagination or
reality, he found himself with hands clenched, and every nerve of
him a-tingle with the lust of combat.

Section 10. A most trying thing it was to a man who carried the
burden of the future in his soul--to have to wrestle with an
obstinate stomach! But so it was again; the magic red liquid seemed
to be losing its power. Then, the pot-boiler was not going well; and
to cap the climax, the manuscripts stopped coming. Thyrsis, after
waiting two or three weeks in suspense and dread, wrote to Mr.
Ardsley, and received a reply to the effect that he would not be
able to send any more. Mr. Ardsley had sent them because of his
interest in the proposed "practical" novel; and now he had learned
that the poet had been giving his time to the writing of an
impossible play!

Thyrsis' predicament was a desperate one, and drove him to a
desperate course. It was now midsummer; and run down from overwork
as he was, could he face the thought of returning to the sweltering
city, to go to work in some office? Or was he to hire out as a
farm-laborer, under he knew not what conditions? He recoiled from
either of these alternatives; and then suddenly, as he racked his
brains, a wild idea flashed over him. For years he had talked and
dreamed of escaping from civilization. He had pictured himself upon
some tropic island, where bananas and cocoanuts grew; or again in
some Northern wilderness, where he might hunt and fish, and live
like the pioneers. And now--why not do it? He had an axe and a rifle
and a fishing-rod; and only a few days previously he had heard a man
telling of a lake in the Adirondacks, where not a dozen people went
in the course of a year.

It was early one morning the idea came to him; and within an hour he
had struck his tent and packed his trunk. He stowed his camp-stuff
and bedding in a dry-goods box, and leaving his tent with the
farmer, he purchased a ticket to a place on the edge of the
wilderness. He put up at a village-hotel, and the next day drove
fifteen miles by a stage, and five more by a wagon, and spent the
night at a lumber-camp far in the wilderness. The next day, carrying
as much of his belongings as he could, he walked three miles more,
and came to the tiny lake that was his goal.

It was perhaps half a mile long; the virgin forest hung about it
like a great green curtain, and the shadows of the blue mountains
seemed as if painted upon its surface. Thyrsis gave a gasp of
delight as he pushed through the bushes and saw it; he stripped and
plunged into the crystal water--and hot and tired and soul-sick as
he was, the coolness of it was like a clasp of protecting arms.
There was a rock rising from the centre, and he swam out and stood
upon it, and gazed about him at all the ravishing beauty, and
laughed and whooped so that the mountains rang with the echoes.

He found an abandoned "open-camp", or shed, the roof of which he
made water-proof with newspapers and balsam-boughs. He cut fresh
boughs for his bed, and spread his blankets upon them, and went back
to the lumber-shanties, and purchased a box of prunes and a bag of
rice. There were huckleberries in profusion upon the hills, and in
the lakes were fish, and in the forests squirrels and rabbits,
partridges and deer. There were the game-laws, to be sure; but there
was also a "higher law", as eminent authorities had declared. As one
of the wits at the lumber-camp put it, "If any wild rabbit comes
rushing out to bite you, don't you hesitate to defend yourself!"

So, with the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents in his
pocket-book, Thyrsis began the happiest experience of his life. He
watched the sun rise and set behind the mountains; and sometimes he
climbed to the summits to see it further upon its way. He watched
the progress of the tempests across the lake, and swam in the water
while the rain splashed his face and the lightning splintered the
pines in the forest. He crouched in the bushes and saw the wild
ducks feeding, and the deer that came at sunset to drink. He watched
the loons diving, and spying him out with their wild eyes--sometimes,
as they rose in flight, beating the surface of the water with a sound
like thunder. At night he heard their loud laughter, and the creaking
cries of the herons flying past. Sometimes far up in the hills a
she-fox would bark, or some too-aged tree of the forest would come
down with a booming crash. Thyrsis would lie in his open camp and
watch the moonlight through the pines, and prayers of thankfulness
would well up within him--

   "Peace of the forest, rich, profound,
    Gather me closely, fold me round!"

There had been much carrying and hard work to do before he was
settled, and there was more of it all through his stay. He had to
cook all his meals and clean up afterwards; and because the nights
were cold and his blankets few, there was much firewood to be cut.
Also, there was no food unless he went out and found it, and so he
spent hours each day tramping about in the forests. By the time he
had got home and had cleaned the game and cooked it, he was
ravenously hungry, and there was never any question as to what would
digest. This was just what he had sought; and so now, deliberately,
he banned all the muses from his presence, and poured the rest of
the dyspepsia-medicine into the lake. His muscles became hard, and
the flush of health returned to his cheeks, and as he went about his
tasks he laughed and sang, and shouted his defiance to the world.
And to Corydon he wrote his newest plan--to earn a little in the
city that winter, and come back in the early spring and build a
log-cabin for herself and the baby!

Section 11. Twice a week his mail came to the lumbercamp, in care of
the friendly foreman. Each time that he went out to get it, he hoped
for some new turn. There was a publisher interested in "The Hearer
of Truth", and an editor was reading "The Higher Cannibalism"; also,
and most important of all, Miss Ethelynda Lewis had now had "The
Genius" for nearly two months, and had not yet reported. Thyrsis
wrote to remind her, and after another two weeks, he wrote yet more
urgently. At last came a note--"I have been away from the city, and
have not had a chance to read the play. I will attend to it at
once." And then, after three weeks more, Thyrsis wrote again--and at
last came a letter that made his heart leap.

"I have read your play", wrote the popular _comГ©dienne_: "I am very
much interested in it indeed. I have asked my manager to read it,
and will write you again shortly."

Thyrsis sent this to Corydon, and again there was rejoicing and
expectation. "If only I can get the play on," he wrote, "our future
is safe, for the profits from plays are enormous. It will be a great
piece of luck if I have found the right person at the first
attempt."

More weeks passed. Thyrsis watched the pageant of autumn upon the
mountains--he saw the curtains of the lake-shore change to gold and
scarlet, and from that to pale yellow and brown; and now, with every
lightest breeze that stirred, there were showers of leaves came
fluttering to the ground. The deer left the lake-shore and took to
the "hard-wood", and the drumming of partridges thundered at sunset.
The nights were bitterly cold, and he spent a good part of his day
chopping logs and carrying them to camp, so that he might keep a
blazing fire all night. There were hunting-parties in the woods,
and he got a deer, and sold part of it, and had the rest hanging
near his camp.

And then one night came the first snow-storm; in the morning it lay
white and sparkling in the sunlight--and oh, the wonder of a
hunting-trip, when the floor of the wilderness was like a page on
which could be read the tale of all that happened in the night! One
could hardly believe that so many creatures were in these
woods--there were tracks everywhere one looked. Here a squirrel had
run, and here a partridge; here had been a porcupine, with feet like
a baby's, and here a fox, and here a bear with two cubs. And in yon
hollow a deer had slept through the night, and here he had blown
away the snow from the moss; here two bucks had fought; and here one
of them had been started by a hunter, and had bounded away with
leaps that it was a marvel to measure.

Thyrsis nearly lost his life at these fascinating adventures; for
another storm came up, and covered his tracks, and when he tried to
find his way back by the compass, he found that he had forgotten
which end of the needle pointed to the North! So he wandered about
for hours; and in the end had to decide by the toss of a penny
whether he should get out to the main road, or wander off into
twenty miles of trackless wilderness, without either food or
matches. Fortunately the penny fell right; and he spent the night at
a farmhouse, and the next day got back to the lumber-camp.

And there was a letter from Ethelynda Lewis! Thyrsis tore it open
and read this incredible message:

"Your play has been carefully considered, and I am disposed to
accept it. It is certainly very unusual and interesting, and I think
it can be made a success. There are, however, certain changes which
ought to be made. I am wondering if you will come to the city, so
that we can talk it over. It would not be possible to settle a
matter so important by mail; and there is no time to be lost, for I
am ready to go ahead with the work at once, and so is my manager."

Section 12. Nothing that the mail had ever brought to Thyrsis had
meant so much to him as this. He was transported with delight. Yes,
for this he would go back to the city!--But then, he caught his
breath, realizing his plight. How was he to get to the city, when he
had only three dollars to his name?

He turned the problem over in his mind. Should he send a telegram to
some relative and beg for help? No, he had vowed to die first.
Should he write to the actress, and explain? No, for that would kill
his chances. There was just one way to be thought of; venison in the
woods was worth eleven cents a pound, and the smallest of deer would
get him to the city!

And so began a great adventure. Thyrsis wrote Miss Ethelynda that he
would come; and that night he loaded up some more buckshot "shells",
and before dawn of the next day was out upon the hunt. The snow was
gone now; and with soft shoes on his feet he wandered all day
through the wilderness--and was rewarded by two chances to shoot at
the white tails of flying deer.

And then came night, and he rigged up a "jack", a forbidden
apparatus made of a soap-box and a lantern and a tin-plate for a
reflector. He had an ingenious arrangement of straps and cords,
whereby he could fasten this upon his head; and he had found an old
lumber-trail where the deer came to feed upon the soft grass. Down
this he crept like a thief in the night, with the light gleaming
ahead, and the deer tramping in the thickets and whistling their
alarms. Now and then one would stand and stare, his eye-balls
gleaming like coals of fire; and at last came the roar of the gun,
and the jacklight tumbled to the ground. When Thyrsis lighted up
again and went to examine, there were spots of blood upon the
leaves--but no deer.

So the next day he was up again at dawn, watching by one of the
runways to the lake. And then came another tramp, through the
thickets and over the mountains--and more shots at the "flags" of
the elusive enemy. Thyrsis' back ached, and his feet were as if
weighted with lead, but still he plodded on and on--it was his life
against a deer's.

If only he had had a boat, so that he could have set up his "jack"
in that! But he had no boat--and so he wrapped himself in blankets
and sat to watch another runway at sunset; and when no deer came he
decided to stay on until the moon rose. It was a bitterly cold
night, and his hands almost froze to the gun-barrel when he touched
it. And the moon rose, and forthwith went behind a cloud--and then
came a deer!

There was hardly a trace of motion in the air, but somehow the
creature half-scented Thyrsis; and so it stood and trumpeted to the
night. Oh, the wildness of that sound--and the thumping of the heart
of the hunter, and the breathless suspense, and the burning desire.
The deer would take a step, and a twig would crack; and then it
would stand still again, and Thyrsis would listen, crouching like a
statue, clutching his weapon and striving to penetrate the darkness.
And then the deer would take two or three more steps, and stand
again; and then, in sudden alarm, bound away; and then come back
again, step by step--fascinated by this mysterious thing there in
the darkness. For three mortal hours that creature pranced and
cavorted about Thyrsis, while he waited with chattering teeth; then
in the end it took a sudden fright, and went bounding away through
the thicket.

So came another day's hunting; and at sundown another watch by a
runway; and another deer, that approached from the wrong direction,
and came upon a man, worn out by three days and nights of effort,
lying sound asleep at his post!

But there could be only one ending to this adventure. Thyrsis was
out for a deer, and he would never quit until he got one. All his
planning and wandering had availed him nothing; but now, the next
morning, as he stepped out from his camp with a bucket in his
hand--behold, at the edge of a thicket, a deer! Thyrsis stood rooted
to the spot, staring blankly; and the deer stood staring at him.

It was a time of agony. Should he try to creep back to his gun, or
should he make a sudden dash? He started to try the latter, and had
a pang of despair as the deer whirled and bolted away. He leaped to
the camp and grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again--and
there, off to the right, was another deer. It was a huge buck, with
wide-spreading antlers, rising out of the bushes where it stood. It
saw Thyrsis, and started away; and in a flash he raised his gun and
fired. He saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel; and
then he started in wild pursuit.

He had been warned to beware of a wounded deer; but he forgot
that--he forgot also that he had no more shells upon him. He ran
madly through the forest, springing over fallen logs, plunging
through thickets--he would have seized hold of the animal with his
bare hands, if only he could have caught up with it.

The deer was badly hurt. It would leap ahead, and then stumble, half
falling, and then leap again. Even in this way, the distance it
covered was amazing; Thyrsis was appalled at the power of the
creature, its tremendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the
crashing of the underbrush before it. It seemed like a huge boulder,
leaping down a precipice; and Thyrsis stood at a safe distance and
watched it. According to the poetry-books he should have been
ashamed--perhaps moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great
creature's eyes. But assuredly the makers of the poetry-books had
never needed the price of a railroad-ticket as badly as Thyrsis
did!

He only realized that night how desperate his need had been. He lay
in his berth on board a train for the city--while back at his
"open-camp" a wild blizzard was raging, and the thermometer stood at
forty degrees below zero. But Thyrsis was warm and comfortable; and
also he was brown and rugged, once more full of health and eagerness
for life. All night he listened to the pounding of the flying train;
and fast as the music of it went, it was not fast enough for his
imagination. It seemed as if the rails were speaking--saying to
him, over and over and over again, "Ethelynda Lewis! Ethelynda
Lewis! Ethelynda Lewis!"

BOOK X

THE END OF THE TETHER

_They sat still watching upon the hill-top, drinking in the scent of
the clover.

"Ah, if only we might have come back here!" she sighed. "If only tee
had never had to leave!"

"That way lies unhappiness" he said.

"Perhaps," she answered; and then quoted--

   'Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
        In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!
    Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?"

"I wonder," said he, "if the poet put as much into these stanzas as
we find in them!"_

Section 1. Through the summer Corydon had been living week by week
upon the hope that her husband would be able to send for her; all
through the fall she had been dreaming of the arrangements they
would make for the winter. But by now it had become clear that they
would have to be separated for a part of the winter as well. She had
sent him long letters, full of hopes and yearnings, anxieties and
rebellions; but in the end she had brought herself to face the
inevitable. And then it transpired that even a greater sacrifice was
required of her--she was to be forbidden to see Thyrsis at all! If a
man did not support his wife, said the world, it was common-sense
that he should not have any wife; that was the quickest way to bring
him to his senses. And so the two had threshed out that problem, and
chosen their course; they would live in the same city, and yet
confine themselves to writing letters!

A curious feeling it gave Thyrsis, to know that she was so near to
him, and yet not to be going to meet her! He could not endure any
part of the city where he had been with her, and got himself a hall
bedroom on the edge of a tenement-district far up town. Then he had
his shoes shined, and purchased a clean collar, and wrote Miss
Ethelynda Lewis that he was ready to call. While he was waiting to
hear from her, there came to him a strange adventure; assuredly one
of the strangest that ever befell a struggling poet, in a world
where many strange adventures have befallen struggling poets.

For six months Thyrsis had not seen his baby; and there had come in
the meantime so many letters, telling so many miraculous things
about that baby! So many dreams he had dreamed about it, so many
hopes and so many prayers were centered in it! Twenty-two hours had
he sat by the bedside when it was born; and through all the trials
that had come afterwards, how he had suffered and wept for it! Now
his heart was wrung with longing to see it, to touch it--his child.
He wrote Corydon that he could not stand it; and Corydon wrote back
that he was right--he should surely see the baby. And so it was
arranged between them that Thyrsis was to be at a certain place in
the park, and she would send the nurse-girl there with little
Cedric.

He went and sat upon a bench; and the hour came, and at last down
the path strolled a nurse-girl, wheeling a baby-carriage. He looked
at the girl--yes, she was Irish, as Cordon had said, and answered
all specifications; and then he looked at the baby, and his heart
sank into his boots. Oh, such a baby! With red hair and a pug-nose,
plebeian and dull-looking--such a baby! Thyrsis stared at the maid
again--and she smiled at him. Then she passed on, and he sank down
upon a bench. Great God, could it be that that was his child? That
he would have to go through life with something so ugly, so alien to
him? A terror seized him. It was like a nightmare. He was hardly
able to move.

But then he told himself it could not be! Corydon had written him
all about the baby; it was beautiful, with a noble head; everyone
loved it. But then, were not mothers notoriously blind? Had there
ever been a mother dissatisfied with her child? Or a father either,
for that matter? Was it not a kind of treason for him to be so
disgusted with this one--since it so clearly must be his?

There was none other in sight; and though he waited half an hour,
none came. At last he could stand it no more, but hurried away to
the nearest telegraph-office. "Has baby red hair?" he wrote. "Did
he come to the park?" And then he went to his room and waited, and
soon after came the reply: "Baby has golden hair. Nurse was ill.
Could not come."

Thyrsis read this, and then shut the door upon the messenger-boy,
and burst into wild, hilarious laughter. He stood there with his
arms stretched out, invoking all posterity to witness--"What do you
think of _that?_ What do you think of _that?_"

And a full hour later he was sitting by his bedside, his chin
supported on his hands, and still invoking posterity. "Will you ever
know what I went through?" he was saying. "Will you ever realize
what my books have cost?" Then he smiled grimly, thinking of
Voltaire's cruel epigram--that "letters addressed to posterity
seldom reach their destination!"

Section 2. Thyrsis received a reply to his note, and went to call
upon Miss Ethelynda Lewis. Miss Lewis dwelt in a luxurious
apartment-house on Riverside Drive, where a colored maid showed him
into a big parlor, full of spindle-legged gilt furniture upholstered
in flowered silk. Also the room contained an ebony grand piano, and
a bookcase, in which he had time to notice the works of Maupassant
and Marie Corelli.

Then Miss Lewis entered, clad in a morning-gown of crimson
"liberty". She was _petite_ and exquisite, full of alluring
dimples--and apparently just out of a perfumed bath. Thyrsis sat on
the edge of his chair and gazed at her, feeling quite out of his
element.

She placed herself on the flowered silk sofa and talked. "I am
immensely interested in that play," she said. "It is _quite_ unique.
And you are so young, too--why, you seem just a boy. Really, you
know I think you must be a genius yourself."

Thyrsis murmured something, feeling uncomfortable.

"The only thing is," Miss Lewis went on, "it will need a lot of
revision to make it practical."

"In what part?" he asked.

"The love-story, principally," said the other. "You see, in that
respect, you have simply thrown your chances away."

"I don't understand," said he.

"You have made your hero act so queerly. Everyone feels that he is
in love with Helena--you meant him to be, didn't you? And yet he
goes away from her and won't see her! Everyone will be disappointed
at that--it's impossible, from every point of view. You'll have to
have them married in the last act."

Thyrsis gasped for breath.

"You see," continued Miss Lewis, "I am to play the part of Helena,
and I am to be the star. And obviously, it would never do for me to
be rejected, and left all up in the air like that. I must have some
sort of a love-scene."

"But"--protested the poet--"what you want me to change is what my
play is _about!_"

"How do you mean?" asked the other.

"Why, it's a new kind of love," he stammered--"a different kind."

"But, people don't understand that kind of love."

"But, Miss Lewis, that's why I wrote my play! I want to _make_ them
understand."

"But you can't do anything like that on the stage," said Miss Lewis.
"The public won't come to see your play." And then she went on to
explain to him the conditions of success in the business of the
theatre.

Thyrsis listened, with a clutch as of ice about his heart. "I am
very sorry, Miss Lewis," he said, at last--"but I couldn't possibly
do what you ask."

"Couldn't do it!" cried the other, amazed.

"It would not fit into my idea at all."

"But, don't you want to get your play produced?"

"That's just it, I want to get my play produced. If I did what you
want me to, it wouldn't be my play. It would be somebody else's
play."

And there he stood. The actress argued with him and protested. She
showed him what a great chance he had here--one that came to a new
and unknown writer but once in a lifetime. Here was a manager ready
to give him a good contract, and to put his play on at once in a
Broadway theatre; and here was a public favorite anxious to have the
leading role. It would be everything he could ask--it would be fame
and fortune at one stroke. But Thyrsis only shook his head--he could
not do it. He was almost sick with disappointment; but it was a
situation in which there was no use trying to compromise--he simply
could not make a "love-story" out of "The Genius".

So at last there came a silence between them--there being nothing
more for Miss Lewis to say.

"Then I suppose you won't want the play," said Thyrsis, faintly.

"I don't know," she answered, with vexation. "I'll have to think
about it again, and talk to my manager. I had not counted on such a
possibility as this."

And so they left it, and Thyrsis went away. The next morning he
received a letter from "Robertson Jones, Inc.", asking him to call
at once.