"But you once believed in Santa Claus!" he retorted. "And does that
make you quarrel with him now? Every time you read a novel, don't
you pretend to believe in people who never existed?"

He went on to show her how much she lost of the sublime and
inspiring things of the past. He took the story of Jesus. It
mattered not in the least if it was fiction or fact--it was there,
as an achievement of the human spirit. He showed her the man of the
gospels--not the stained-glass god with royal robes and shining
crown, but the humble workingman, with his dream of a heaven nearby,
and a father who loved his children without distinction. He went
about among the poor and humble, the world's first revolutionist;
teaching the supremacy of the soul--a doctrine which was to be as
dynamite beneath the pillars of all established institutions. He
lived as a tramp and an outcast, and he died the death of a
criminal; and now those who had murdered him were using his
doctrines to enslave the world!--All this was a new idea to Corydon,
and she resolved forthwith that she would begin her readings with
the New Testament.

Section 6. So it went, until Thyrsis looked up with a start, and saw
that the shadows were falling. It was five o'clock, and they had not
stopped to eat! Even so, they had no time to cook, but made a cold
meal--and talked all the time they were eating.

Then Corydon said, "I must start for home."

"You won't want any supper," said Thyrsis. "Let's see the sunset
first."

"But mother will be expecting me," she objected.

"She'll know you're all right," he replied.

So they climbed the hill, and sat and watched the sunset and the
rising full moon. The air was clear, and the sky like opal, and the
pale, pearly tints of the clouds were ravishing to behold. To
Thyrsis it seemed that these colors were an image of the soul that
was disclosed to him. He would have been at a loss for words to
describe the extraordinary sense of purity that Corydon gave to him;
it was not simply her maidenhood--it was something far more rare
than that. Here was an utterly perfect human soul; a soul without
speck or blemish--without a base idea, with no trace of a vanity,
unaware what a pretense might be. The joy and wonder of life welled
spontaneously in her, she moved to a noble impulse as a cloud moves
before the wind. She was like a creature from the skies they were
watching.

And here, in the silver moonlight, a memorable hour came to them.
Thyrsis told her of his consecration, and why he lived his
hermit-life. He had known for years that he was not as other men;
and now every hour it was becoming clearer to him. He shrunk from
the word, because it had been desecrated by the world; but it was
Genius. More and more frequently there was coming to him this
strange ecstasy, the source of which he could not guess; it was like
the giving way of flood-gates within him--the pouring in of a tide
of wonder and joy. It made him tremble like a leaf, it made him cry
aloud and fall down upon the ground exhausted. And yet, whatever the
strain might be, he never lost his grip upon himself; rather, all
the powers of his mind seemed to be multiplied--it seemed as if all
existence became one with his soul.

Never before had he uttered a word of this to anyone. No one could
understand the burden it had laid upon him. For this was the thing
that all the world was seeking, for the lack of which the world was
dying; and it was his to give or to withhold, to lose or to save. He
had to forge it and shape it, he had to embody it, to set it forth
in images and symbols. And that meant a terrific labor, a feat of
mental and emotional endurance quite indescribable. He must hold it,
though it burned like fire; he must clutch it to his bosom, though
it tore at his heart-strings.

"Sometimes," he said, "I fail and have to give up; and then I have
nothing but a memory without words--or perhaps a few broken phrases
that seem mere nonsense. Then I am like a man who has seen some
loved one drowned or burned to death before his eyes. It is a thing
so ineffable, so precious; and some power seeks to tear it away from
me, to bear it into oblivion forever. I can't know, of course--it
might come to some one else--or it might never come again. The
feeling I have is like that of a mother for an unborn child; if I do
not give it life, no one ever will. And don't you see--compared with
that, what does anything else count? I would lie down and be crushed
to pieces, if that would help; truly, I would suffer less than I
suffer in what I try to do. And so, the things that other men care
for--they simply don't exist for me. I must have a little money,
because I have to have something to eat, and a place to work in. But
I don't want position or fame--I don't shrink from any ridicule or
humiliation. It seems like a mad thing to say, but I have nothing to
do either with men's evil or with their good. I am not bound by any
of their duties; I can't have any country or any home, I can't have
wife or children--I can hardly even have any friends. Don't you
see?"

"Yes," whispered Corydon, deeply moved, "I see."

"Look," he went on--"see all the vice and misery in the world--the
cruelty and greed and hate. And see all the stupid and petty things,
the narrow motives, the vanities and the jealousies! And all that is
because people haven't this thing that has come to me; they don't
know the possibilities of life, they lack the sense of its
preciousness and sacredness. And they seek and seek--and go astray!
Take drunkenness, for instance; that brings them joy, but it's a
false scent, it leads them over a precipice. I've been down at the
bottom of it--you know why I have to go there, and what I've seen.
And that is where the best of men's faculties go--yes, it's
literally true! The men who are dull and plodding, they are
contented; it's the men who are adventurous and aspiring who come to
that precipice. I walk down an avenue and see the lines of saloons
with their gleaming lights, and that thought is like a scream of
anguish in my soul; there came a phrase to me once, that I wanted to
cry out to people--'the graveyards of your genius! the graveyards
of your genius!'"

Corydon was gazing at his uplifted face. She said, "That is how
Jesus must have felt, when he wept over Jerusalem."

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "It is a new religion trying to be born. Only
nowadays they don't persecute you, they just ignore you. They don't
hang you up on a cross and make you conspicuous and picturesque--
they ridicule you and let you starve. And that is what I face, you
see. I've saved a hundred dollars--just barely enough to buy me food
until I've written the book!"

"And other people have so much!" cried Corydon.

"So much--and no idea what to do with it. They just fling it away,
in a drunken frenzy. And down below are the poor, who slave to make
civilization possible. Such lives as they have to live--I can't ever
get the thought out of my mind, not in any happiest moment! I feel
as if I were a man who had escaped from a beleaguered city, and it
all depended upon me to carry the tidings and bring relief. I'm
their one hope, and if I fail them I'm a traitor, an accursed being!
They are ignorant and helpless, and their cry comes to me like some
great storm-wind of grief and despair. Oh, some day I mean to utter
words that will reach them--I can't fail! I can't fail!"

"No!" whispered Corydon. "You must not fail!"

They sat in silence for a while.

"How I wish that I could help you!" she said.

"Who can tell?" he answered. "Perhaps you may. A true friend is a
rare thing to find."

"I would do anything in the world to share in such a work."

"You really mean that? As hard as it is?"

"I would bear anything," she said. "I would go to the ends of the
earth for it. I would fling away the whole world--just as you have
done."

"Ah, but are you strong enough? Could you stand it?"

"I don't know that--I'm only a child. But I wouldn't mind dying."

And so it came. It came as the dawn comes, unheralded,
unheeded--spreading wider, till the day is there. Months afterwards
they talked about it, and Thyrsis asked, "When did I propose to
you?"

"I don't think you ever proposed to me," she answered. "It just
came. It had to come--there was no other way."

"But when did I first kiss you?" he asked.

"I don't know even that," she said, and pondered.

"Did I kiss you that night when we sat on the hill?" he asked.

"I wouldn't have known it if you had," said Corydon. "It was as
natural for you to kiss me as it was for me to draw my breath."

Section 7. The moon was high when they went down the hill, and he
rowed her home. They were silent with the awe that was upon them.
They found the people at home in a panic, but they scarcely knew
this--and they scarcely troubled to explain.

Then Thyrsis went home, and spent half the night roaming about in
excitement. And early in the morning he was sitting on the edge of
his canvas-cot, whispering to himself again, "Corydon! Little
Corydon!"

He could not think of work that day, but set out to walk to the
village by the lonely mountain-road; and half-way there he met the
girl, coming in the other direction. There was a light of wonder in
her eyes; and also there was perplexity. For all that morning she
had been whispering to herself, "Thyrsis! Thyrsis!"

They sat by the roadside to talk it over.

"Corydon," he began, "I've been thinking about what we said last
night, and it frightens me horribly. And I want to ask you please
not to think about it any more. I could not take anyone else into my
life--before God, I couldn't be so cruel. I have been shuddering at
the thought of it. Oh please, please, run away from me--before it is
too late!"

"Is that the way it seems?" she asked.

"Corydon!" he cried. "I am a tormented man! There can't be any
happiness in the world for me. And you are so beautiful and so pure
and so good--I simply dare not think of it! You must be happy,
Corydon!"

"I have never yet been happy," she said.

"Listen," he went on--"there is a stanza of Walter Scott's that came
to me this morning--an outlaw song. It seemed to sum up all my
feeling about it:

   "'Maiden! a nameless life I lead,
      A nameless death I'll die;
    The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
      Were better mate than I!'"

Corydon sat staring ahead. "You can't frighten me away from you,"
she said, in a low voice. "It isn't worth your while to try. But let
me tell you what I came to say. I'm so ignorant and so helpless--I
didn't see how I could be of any use to you. And so I wanted to tell
you that you must do whatever seemed best to you--just don't count
me at all. You see what I mean--I'm not afraid for myself, but just
for you. I couldn't bear the thought that I might be in your way. I
felt I had to come and tell you that, before you went back to your
work."

Now Thyrsis had set out with mighty battlements reared about him;
and not all the houris and the courtesans of all the ages could have
found a way to breach them. But before those simple sentences of
Corydon's, uttered in her gentle voice, and with her maiden's gaze
of wonder--the battlements crumbled and rocked.

And that was always the way of it. There were endless new
explanations and new attitudes, new excursions and discoveries. They
would part with a certain understanding, but they never knew with
what view they would meet in the morning. They were swung from one
extreme to the other, from certitude to doubt, from joy to dismay
and despair. And so, day after day they would sit and talk, for
uncounted hours. Corydon would come to the little cabin, or Thyrsis
would come to the village, and they would wander about the roads or
the woods, forgetting their meals, forgetting all the world. Once
they wandered away into the mountains, and they sat until the dusk
closed round them; they were almost lost that night.

"Of course," Thyrsis had been saying, "we should not be married like
other men and women."

"No," said Corydon, "of course not."

"We should be brother and sister," he said.

"Yes," she assented.

"And it would not be real marriage--I mean, it would be just for the
world's eyes."

"So I don't see how it could hinder you," Corydon added. "Whatever I
did that was wrong, you would tell me. And then too, about money. I
shouldn't be any burden; for I have twenty-five dollars a month of
my own."

"I had no idea of that," said Thyrsis.

"I've only had it for a year," said Corydon. "An aunt left me nearly
four thousand dollars. I can't touch the principal until I'm thirty,
but I have the income, and that will buy me everything I need. And
so it would be just as if you didn't have me to think of."

"I don't think the money side matters so much," was his reply. "It's
only this summer, you see--until I've finished the book."

Section 8. The key to all the future was the book; but alas, the
book was not coming on. How could one write amid such excitement?
This was a new kind of wine in Thyrsis' blood. This was reality! And
before it his dream-phantoms seemed to have dissolved into
nothingness.

They would make a compact for so many days, and he would start to
work; but he would find himself thinking of Corydon, and new
problems would arise, and he would take to writing her notes--and
finally realize in despair that he might as well go and see her.

Meantime Corydon would be wrestling with tasks of her own. They had
talked over her development, and agreed that what she needed was
discipline. And because Thyrsis had read her some of Goethe's
lyrics, she had decided to begin with German. Thyrsis had wasted a
great deal of time with German courses in college, and so he was
able to tell her everything not to do. He got her a little primer of
grammar, just enough to make clear the language-structure; and then
he set her to acquiring a vocabulary. He had little books full of
words that he had prepared for himself, and these she drilled into
her brain, all day and nearly all night. She stopped for nothing but
to eat--in the woods when the weather was fair and in her room when
it rained, she studied words, words, words! And she made amazing
progress--while Thyrsis was wrestling with his angels she read
Grimm's fairy tales, and some of Heyse's "Novellen," and "Hermann
and Dorothea," and "Wilhelm Tell."

But these were children's tasks, and her pilgrimage was one of
despair. Above were the heights where Thyrsis dwelt, inaccessible,
almost invisible; and how many years must she toil to reach them!
She would come to him with tears in her eyes--tears of shame for her
ignorance and her stupidity. And then Thyrsis would kiss the tears
away, and tell her how many brilliant and clever women he had met,
who had the souls of dolls behind all their display of culture.

So Corydon would escape that unhappiness--but alas, only to fall
into another kind. For she was a maiden, beautiful and tender, and
ineffably precious to Thyrsis; and when they met, their hands would
come together--it was as natural for them to embrace as for the
flowers to grow. And this would lead to moods of weakness and
satisfaction--not to that divine discontent, that rage of impatience
which Thyrsis craved. It seemed to him that Corydon grew more and
more in love with him, and more willing to cling to him; and he was
savage because of his own complaisance. They would spend hours,
exchanging endearments and whispering youthful absurdities; and
then, the next day, he would write a note of protest, and Corydon
would be wild with misery, and would tear up his love-notes, and
vow in tears that he should never touch her hand again. Now and then
he would try to suggest to her that what she needed for the
fulfillment of her life was not a madman like himself, but a husband
who would love her and cherish her, as other women were loved and
cherished; and there was nothing in all the world that galled her
quite so much as this.

Section 9. There came a time when all these happenings could no
longer be hid from parents. This unthinkable "engagement" had to be
announced, and the furies of grief and rage and despair unchained.
No one could realize the change that had come over Corydon--Cory-don,
the meek and long-suffering, who now was turned to granite, and
immovable as the everlasting hills. As for Thyrsis, all kinds of
madness had come from him, and were expected from him. But even he
was appalled at the devastation which this thunderbolt caused.

"You have ruined your career! You have ruined your career!" was the
cry that rang in his ears all day. And he knew what the world meant
by this. Young men of talent who wished to rise in the world did not
burden themselves with wives at the age of twenty; they waited until
their careers were safe--and meantime, if they felt the need, they
satisfied their passions with the daughters of the poor. And it was
for some such "eligible man" as this that the world had been
preparing Corydon; it was to save her for his coming that her
sheltered life had been intended. Her beauty and tenderness would
appeal to him, her innocence would bring a new thrill to his jaded
passions; and when he offered his hand, there would be no whisper of
what his past might have been, there would be no questions asked as
to any vices or diseases he might bring with him. There would be
trousseaus and flowers and wedding-cake, rice and white ribbons
and a honeymoon-journey; and then an apartment in the city, or
perhaps even a whole house, with a butler and a carriage--who could
tell? With wealth pouring into the metropolis from North and West
and South, such things fell often to beautiful and innocent maidens
in sheltered homes.

And here was this one, flinging herself away upon a penniless poet
who could not support her, and did not even propose to try! "Does he
mean to get some work?" was the question; and gently Corydon
explained that they intended "to live as brother and sister." And
that capped the climax--that proved stark, raving madness, if it did
not prove downright knavery and fraud.

In the end, being utterly baffled and helpless with dismay, the
mothers turned upon each other; for to each of them, the virtues of
her own offspring being so apparent, it was clear that this hideous
tragedy must have come from the machinations of the other. One day
Thyrsis and his mother, walking down a road, met Corydon and her
mother, upon a high hill where the winds blew wildly; and here they
poured out their grief, and hurled their impeachments against the
storm. To Thyrsis they assumed heroic proportions, they towered like
queens of tragedy; in after-history this was known as the Meeting of
the Mothers, and he likened it to the great contest in the
Nibelungenlied between Brunhild and Kriemhild.

Then, on top of it all, there came another calamity. In the
boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly ladies, who had a
remarkable faculty for divining the evil deeds of other people. They
had divined the evil deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them
was moved to come to Corydon's mother one day, and warn her lest
others should divine them too. And so there was more agony; the
discovery was made that Corydon had become a social outcast to all
the maids and matrons of the summer population--a girl who went to
visit a poet in his lonely cabin, and stayed until unknown hours of
the night. And so there came to Thyrsis a note saying that Corydon
must come no more to the cabin; and later in the day came Corydon
herself, to bring the tidings that a telegram had come from the
city, and that she and her mother were to leave the place the next
day.

Thyrsis was aflame with anger, and was for going to the nearest
parson and having the matter settled there and then. But Corydon
dissuaded him from this.

"I've been thinking it over," she said, "and it's best that I should
go. You must finish the book--everything depends upon that, and you
know that if I came here now you couldn't do it. But if I go away,
there'll be nothing to disturb you. I can study meantime; and when
we meet in the city in the fall, everything will be clear before
us."

She came and put herself in his arms. "You know, dear heart," she
said, "it won't be easy for me to go. But I'm sure it's for the
best!"

And Thyrsis saw that she was right, and so they settled it. She
spent that day with him--their last day; and floods of tenderness
welled up in their hearts, and the tears ran down their cheeks. It
was only now that she was going that Thyrsis realized how precious
she had become to him, and what a miracle of gentleness and trust
she was.

They agreed that here, and not in the village, was the place for
their parting. So they poured out their love and devotion, and made
their pledges for the future; and towards sundown he kissed her
good-bye, and put her in the boat, and stood watching until it was a
mere speck down the lake. Then he went back to the house, with a
great cavern of loneliness in his soul.

And in spite of all resolves, he was up with the dawn next day, and
walking to the village--he must see her once again! He went to the
depot with her, and upon the platform they said another farewell;
thereby putting a seal upon Corydon's damnation in the eyes of the
maids and matrons of the summer population.

BOOK III

THE VICTIM HESITATES

_They had opened a wooden box which lay beside them.

"Ten years!" she said. "How they have faded!"

"And the creases are tight," said he; "they will be hard to read."

"Letters! letters!" she exclaimed--"some of them sixty pages long!
How much would they make?"

"Perhaps a quarter of a million words," he said.

"What is to be done about it?"

"They must be selected, and then cut, and then trimmed and pruned."

"And will that leave any idea of it?"

He answered with a simile. "You wish to convey to a man how it feels
to pound stone for twelve hours in the sun. The only way you could
really do it would be to take him and let him pound for twelve
hours. But he wouldn't stand for that."

"So you let him pound for one hour," said she, with a smile.

"I will put up a sign," he said--_

   'HERE BEGINS THE STONE-POUNDING!'

_And then those who are interested will come in and try it; and the
rest will peer through the fence and pass on."

To which she responded, "I would make the sign read,_

   'ADMISSION TO LOVERS ONLY!'"

MY THYRSIS!

Oh, if I might only stay in a convent until you are ready to take
me! Since I left you I find myself possessed of cravings, which, if
I indulged them, might bring me the fate of the Maid of Neidpath!

Truly I have known some miserable moments. But I am trying very hard
to cultivate a happy, confident activity. The people here are
aggressive, and I am afraid I have been rude, which I never like to
be. I just succeeded in getting away from a young man who wanted to
walk to the village with me. Do you know, it would drive me
absolutely mad to talk to anyone now!

My soul has only one cry, and I could sometimes go out on the
mountain-side and scream it aloud to the winds. I fear I shall be a
trifle wild, in fact utterly in pieces, until you come, with that
wonderful recipe of yours for binding me together, and making me
complete. I think of you in your house, and wish to God I were
there, or out in the desert even, if you were with me.

When I passed through the city I felt exactly as if I were in Hades.
The glaring lights and the fearful rattle, the lazy, lounging men--I
had dinner in a restaurant, in which all the people seemed to be
feeding demons! It has been distinctly shown me why so many people
have thought you a rude unmannerly boy! I don't know what people
would think, if I had to be amongst them long.

I have begun so many letters to you in my mind, and oh, the times I
have told myself how much I loved you! I have read your letters and
slept with them under my pillow, like the veriest love-lorn maiden.
But all my happy thoughts are gone at present. It is distracting to
me to have to come into such close contact with people.

Oh, tell me, dearest one, what I shall have to do to control myself
and preserve the peace of my soul, until I go to you forever? I must
not long to see you, it prevents me from studying. If you might only
come to me at one moment in the day, and give me one kiss, and then
go away! You see, I am conducting myself in a very unwise
manner--and it is necessary I should study! I should love to have an
indomitable capacity for work, and eat only two meals a day, and
never have to think about my body.

I want to tell you what I feel, how utterly and absolutely I am
yours, and how any image that comes between you and me enrages me.
If only you knew how I give myself up to you in thought, word, and
deed!--My one reason for acting now, is that I may show you
something I have done, my one thought is to be what you would wish
me. No one, no one understands, or ever will, what is in your heart
and in mine--to be locked there for ages. There I have placed all my
power of love and religion and hope of the life that is to be. To
you I give all my trust, all my worship, you are the one link that
binds me to myself and to God. Without you I feel now that I should
be a poor wanderer.

You give me my feeling of wholeness, of the possibility of
completion, that I never had before. In my best and truest moments I
know that with you I can be what I have hoped. With you before my
eyes I have a grim resolution to conquer or die. The one thing I am
sure of always is my love for you. It might be possible for you to
stop loving me; but I, now that I have begun, shall continue to love
you to the day I die--and after, I hope. I do not love you for what
you can give me, I love you because you are you, I must love you now
no matter what you are. I believe Shakespeare was right when he said
that "love is not love which alters, when it alteration finds." I do
not believe that a person can really love more than once.

I must go to my German again and leave you. Do you love me? Do you
love me? Do you love me?

II

My dearest Corydon:

I received a letter from you before dinner, and as usual had one of
my flights of emotion, and thought of many things to write to you.
Now I am up on the mountain-side, trying to recall them. Dearest,
you are, as always, more precious to me. I am glad to see that you
are suffering some, and I think that it is well that you have to be
away from me for awhile, to fight some of your own soul's battles.
You see that I am in my stern humor; as convinced as ever that the
soul is to be deepened only by effort, and that the great glory of
life cannot be bought or stolen, or even given for love, but must be
earned.

I will tell you what I have been doing since you left. I spent three
whole days in the most unimaginable wretchedness; I had no
hindrances like yours--only the most fearful burden of dullness and
sloth, that had crept upon me and mastered me, during all the weeks
that I had let myself be so upset and delayed. I cannot picture what
I go through when I lose my self-command in that way, but it is like
one who is tied down upon a railroad track and hears a train coming.
He gets just as desperate as he pleases, and suffers anything you
can imagine--but he does not get free. And always the book would be
hanging before me, a kind of external conscience, to show me what I
ought to have been.

Now I have gotten myself out of that, by an effort that has quite
worn me out. When I found myself at work again, I felt a kind of
savage joy of effort, a greater power than I ever knew before. In
the reckless mood that I had got to, it seemed to me that I could
keep so forever.

Now dearest, you must get the same unity in your life; you must
concentrate all your faculties upon that--get for yourself that
precious habit of being "instant in prayer", and "strenuous for the
bright reward". As Wordsworth has it, "Brook no continuance of
weak-mindedness!" Let it come to you with a pang that hurts you,
that for one minute you have been idle, that you have admitted to
yourself that life is a thing of no consequence, and that you do not
care for it. I shall have to talk to you that way--perhaps not so
often as I do to myself, because I do not think you are really in
your heart such a very dull and sodden creature as I am.

I think the greatest trial we shall have will be our fondness for
each other, and the possibility of being satisfied simply to hold
each other in our arms. But we shall get the better of that, as of
everything else; and that is not the problem now. You must learn to
strive, learn to master yourself; you must prove your power so. Do
not care how rude you have to be to those people; look upon the
things about you as a kind of dream-world, and know that your own
soul's life is the one real thing for you. And don't write any more
about how circumstances hold you back. When you have got to work you
will know that you are given your soul for no purpose but to fight
circumstances; that they are the things to make you fight. When they
are removed, as I know to my cost, there is still the same necessity
of fighting; only it is like a horse who has to win a race without
the spurs.

You must talk to yourself about this, night and day, until this
desire is so awake in you that you can't go idle many moments
without its rushing into your mind, and giving you a kind of
electric shock. And when that happens you fling aside every thing
else, every idea but the work that you ought to be doing, and put
all your faculties upon that; and every time that you catch them
wandering, you do the same thing again, and again. Some times when I
become very keenly aware of myself, and of what a shallow creature I
really am, it seems to me that it is only by wearing myself out in
that grim and savage way that I can make myself even tolerable.

I _must_ stop. Do you know that for five precious hours by my watch
I have sat up here thinking about you and writing to you? Dear
me--and I am tired, and frozen, for there is a cold wind. I shall
have, I see, to prove some of _my_ powers, by not writing letters to
you when I should be at the book.

I see that it takes four or five days for letters to come and go
between us; and so if we write often, our letters will be crossing.
Four or five days is time enough for us to change our moods a dozen
times, so our correspondence will be apt to be complicated!

III

MY DEAREST THYRSIS:

It has worried me somewhat to-day that you might be utterly
disappointed in the letter I wrote you. It was a wild jumble of
words, but I was fighting all sorts of uncomfortable things within
me. To-day I have been anything but despairing, and have "gone at"
the German. In fact, I quite lost myself in it, and believe I
understand thoroughly the construction of the first poem. Wonderful
accomplishment!

Your words, as I read them again, dear heart, are full of a great
beauty and fire and energy, and I only hope you may keep them
always. I believe that the possibility of the marriage we both
desire, depends greatly if not entirely on _your_ sternness. You
must realize it.

I cannot tell with the proper conditions and training what energy I
might be able to accumulate for myself, but in the meanwhile the
thing that makes me most wretched is my utter incapacity at times,
and my inability to share with you your work. In my weaker and more
helpless moods, I ask myself with a pang, whether I ought to go with
you at all, when I cannot help you. But I must stop fuming. I have
come out of my mudpuddle for good and for all, and that is the main
consideration. I don't intend to go back.

We must not think of each other in any way but as co-workers in a
great labor; we must simply know that our love is rooted deeply, and
the harder we work the more firm it will be. There is no reason why
we should not go to the altar with just this sternness, and from now
on preserve this attitude until the day when we have earned the
right to consider what love means. Can you do it? I will prove to
you that I can.

IV

MY DEAR THYRSIS:

I am trying very dreadfully, and go away alone and pound at the
German as if my life depended upon it. I go to bed every night with
a tight feeling in my head, but I do not mind, as I take it for a
guarantee that I have not rested.

And oh, my dearest, dearest and best, I am trying not to think of
you too much--that is too much in a way that does not help me to
study. But I love you really, yes, truly, and I know I would follow
you anywhere. I am not particularly joyful, but then I do not expect
to be for a great many years.

V

DEAR THYRSIS:

Only a few words. I have been hovering to-day between spurts of
hopeful energy, and the most indescribable despair. It positively
freezes my heart, and I have been on the point of writing to you and
telling you to relieve yourself of the responsibility of me. The
reason is because it seems a perfectly Herculean task to read
"Egmont". I have to look up words in the dictionary until I am
absolutely so weary I care not about anything; and then I think of
you, and what you are able to do, and at one word from you I would
give up all idea of marrying you.

I tell you I am up and down in this mood. Great God, I could work
all day and all night if I could do what you do, but to strain at
iron fetters--a snail! Oh, I cannot tell you--I simply groan under
it. At such times I have no more idea of marrying you than of
journeying to the moon. I repeat to you, to be constantly choked
back, while you are rapidly advancing, will kill me. I don't know
what you will say to this, but it is intolerable, unendurable, to
me. When I think of your ability and mine, I simply laugh about it
--Thyrsis, it is simply ridiculous. I do not ask you to take me with
you, Thyrsis.

Do you wonder at my writing all this? You would not if you
understood. It is so hard for me to keep any joy in my heart, and I
get tired of repeated failures, that is all. I thought I must write
you this, and have it over with. This is the style of letter I have
always torn up, but this time it goes. I think I will practice the
piano now, and try to get some gladness into my soul again.

VI

MY DEAR, DEAR THYRSIS:

There is a dreadful sort of letter which I wrote you last night
which I haven't sent you yet.

I have been studying, or trying to most of the day, and my mind has
wandered most painfully. There were two days in which I seemed to
have hold of myself, but with an effort that was a fearful strain. I
must try so, that it almost kills me, if I wish to accomplish even a
little of what I ought. The heat here is almost insupportable, it is
stifling, and I spent an hour or so in the water this afternoon.

And the thought is always torture to me--that you are accomplishing
so much more than I! I was thinking of your letters to-night, and I
recalled some words that seemed to speak more of your love for me.
Oh, Thyrsis, if your letters are fiery and passionate, is it for
love of _me_ that they are? I'm almost afraid at times, when I read
your letters--when you tell me of the kind of woman you _want_ to
love.

I at present am certainly not she. And do you know that when we are
married we shall be united forever? I don't know why I write you
these things, they are not at all inspiring thoughts to me.

And yet I was able to go in swimming this afternoon, and forget
everything and frolic around as happily as any water-baby!

VII

MY DEAR CORYDON:

I came off to write my poem, but I have been thinking about you, and
I must write a long letter. It is one of the kind that you do not
like.

In the first place, you complain of the contradictions in my
letters. I am sorry. I live so, struggling always with what is not
best in me, and continually falling down. Also, in this matter I am
an utter stranger, groping my way; and there is an element of
passion in it, a dangerous element, which leads me continually
astray.

I can only say that in my ideal of love, which is utter love and
spiritual love, I think of living my life with you in entire
nakedness of soul. Therefore, I shall always be before you exactly
as I should be by myself. And I shall write you now exactly what I
have been thinking, what is hard and unkind in it, as well as the
rest. You will learn to know me as a man far from perfect, often
going astray himself, often feeling wrong things, often leading you
astray and making you wretched. But behind all this there is the
thing often lost sight of, but always present--the iron duty that I
have, and the force in me which drives me to it.

All this morning I have been thinking of my book, losing myself in
it and filling myself with its glory. This afternoon I fell to
thinking about us; and thoughts which have been lurking in my mind
for a long time got the upper hand for the first time. They were
that I did not love you as I ought to, that I could not; that the
love which I felt was a thing from my own heart, and that it had
carried me away because I was anxious to persuade myself I had found
my ideal upon earth; that you _could_ not satisfy the demands upon
life that I made, and that if I married you it would be to make you
wretched, and myself as well; that you had absolutely nothing of the
things that I needed, and that the life which your nature required
was entirely different from mine; that you had no realization of the
madness that was driving me, could find and give me none of the
power I needed; and that I ought to write and tell you this, no
matter what it cost--that I owed it to the sacred possibility of my
own soul, to live alone if I could live better alone. And when I had
said these words, I felt a sense of relief, because they were
haunting me, and had been for a long time.

How they will affect you I cannot tell, it depends upon deep your
love for me is; certainly they mean for me that _my_ love is not
deep, that you have not made yourself necessary to me. I think that
in that last phrase I put the whole matter in its essence--you have
not _bound_ yourself to me; I am always struggling to keep my love
firm and right, to hold myself to you. The result is that there is
no food for my soul in the thought of our love, in my thought of
you; and therefore, I am continually dissatisfied and doubting,
continually feeling the difference between the love I have dreamed
and our love.

I tried to think the matter out, and get to the very bottom of it.
The first thing that came to me on the other side was your absolute
_truth_; your absolute devotion to what was right and noble in our
ideal. So that, as I was thinking, I suddenly stopped short with
this statement--"If you cannot find right love with that girl, it
must be because you do not honor love, or care for it." And then I
thought of your helplessness, of your lack of training and
opportunity for growth; and I told myself how absurd it was of me to
expect satisfying love from you--when all that I knew about in life,
and thought of, was entirely unknown to you. I realized that I was a
man who had tasted more or less of all knowledge, and had an
infinite vision of knowledge yet before him, and an infinite hunger
for it; and that you were a school-girl, with all of a school-girl's
tasks on your hands. So I said to myself that the reason for the
dissatisfaction was a fault of my own, that it had come from my own
blindness. I had gone wrong in my attitude to you; I had failed in
my sternness and my high devotion to perfection; I had contented
myself with lesser things, had come down from my best self, and had
failed to make you see what a task was before you, if you ever meant
to know my best self. You perceive that this is a return to my
old-time attitude; I am sorry if it makes you wretched, but I cannot
help it. It is a surgical operation that must be borne. I shall not
make it necessary again, I hope.

Now, dear Corydon, I am not trying to choose pleasant words in this
letter, this is the way I talk to _myself_. And if anything good
comes from our love, it will be because of this letter. I challenge
what is noblest in you to rise to meet the truth of it. I should not
care to write to you if I did not feel that it would.

You have had a possibility offered to you, and because you are very
hungry for life you have clasped it to you, placed all your
happiness in it. The possibility is the love of a man whose heart
has been filled with the fire of genius. There are few men whom life
takes hold of as it does me, who sacrifice themselves for their duty
as I do, who demand _experience_--knowledge, power, beauty--as I do.
There are very few men who will wrest out of existence as much as I
will, or know and have as much of life. I am a boy just now, and
only beginning to live; but I have my purpose in hand, and I know
that if I am given health and life, there is nothing that men have
known that I shall not know, nothing that is done in the world that
I shall not do, or try to. I have a strong physique, and I labor day
and night, and always shall. I shall always be hungry and restless,
always dissatisfied with myself, and with everything about me, and
acting and feeling most of the time like a person haunted by a
devil. I make no apologies to you for the conceit of what I am
saying; it is what I think of myself, without caring what other
people think. I know that I have a tremendous temperament,
tremendous powers hidden within me, and they have got to come out.
When they do, the world will know what I know now.

Now Corydon, as you understand, I dream love absolute, and would
scorn any other kind. I can master my passion, if it be that upon
earth there is no woman willing or able to go with me to the last
inch of my journey. I dream a life-companion to follow wherever my
duty drives me; to feel all the desperateness of desire that I feel,
to be stern and remorseless as I must be, wild and savage as I must
be; to race through knowledge with me and to share my passion for
truth with me; a woman with whom I need have no shame in the duty of
my genius! As I tell you, if I marry you, I expect to give myself to
you as your own heart; and then I think of the gentle and mild
existence you have led!

It is very hard for me even to tell about my life, or to explain
this thing that drives me mad. But I am writing this letter to you
for the purpose of making clear to you that there are two
alternatives before you, and that you must choose one or the other
and stick by it, and bear the consequences. It is painful to me to
think that I have fascinated you by what opportunities I have, even
by what power and passion and talents I have, and filled you with a
hunger for me--when really you do not realize at all what I am, or
what I must be, and when what I have to do will terrify you. I write
in the thought of terrifying you _now_, and making you give up this
red-hot iron that you are trying to hold on to; or else to show you
my life so plainly that never afterwards can you blame me, or shrink
back except by your own fault.

You must not blame me for writing these words, for wondering if a
woman, if _any_ woman has power to stand what I need to do. And when
I talk to you about giving me up, you must not think that is cold,
but know that it is my faithfulness to my vision, which is the one
thing to which I owe any duty in the world. Nor is it right that you
should expect to be essential to me, when I have labored to be all
to myself. You could become necessary to me in the years to come; if
I marry you to-day I shall marry you for what you are to become, and
for that _alone_--at any rate if I am true to myself.

If you are to be my wife you are to be my soul--to live my soul's
life and bear its pain. You are to understand that I talk to you as
I talk to myself, call you the names I call myself, and if you cry,
give you up in disgust; that I am to deny you all pleasure as I do
myself, and what God knows will be ten thousand times harder, let
you take pleasure, and then spring up in the very midst of it--you
know what I mean! That I am to be ever dissatisfied with you, ever
inconsiderate of your feelings, and ever declaring that you are
failing! That however much I may love you, I am to be your
conscience, and therefore keep you--just about as you are now,
miserable! You told me that you would gladly be whipped to learn to
live; and this can be the only thing to happen to you.

You must understand why I act in this way. I am a weak and
struggling man, with a thousand temptations; and when I marry you,
you will be the greatest temptation of all. You are a beautiful
girl, and I love you, and every instinct of my nature drives me to
you; for me to live with you without kissing you or putting my arms
about you, will remain always difficult. It will be so for you, as
for me, and it will always be our danger, and always make us
wretched. Your soul rises in you as I write this, and you say (as
you've said before) that if I offered to kiss you after it, it would
be an insult. But only wait until we meet!

This is the one thing that has become clear to me: just as soon as
there comes the least thought of satisfaction in our love, just so
soon does it cease to satisfy my best self. You cannot satisfy my
best self, you do not even know it; and if it were a question of
that, I should never dream of marrying you! I love you for this and
for this alone--because you are an undeveloped soul, the dream of
whose infinite possibilities is my one delight in the matter. I
think that you are _perfect_ in character, that you are truth
itself; and therefore, no matter how helpless you may be, I have no
fear of failing to make you "all the world to me", provided only
that I am not false to my ideal. You must know from what I have
written before that I _can_ love, that I do know what love is, and
that you may trust me. I am not trying to degrade passion--I simply
see how passion throws the burden on the woman, and therefore it is
utterly a crime with us--the least thought of it! I ought to
consider you as a school-girl, really just that; and instead of that
I write you love letters!

I tell you there is nothing more hateful for me to look back upon
than that childish business of ours, that time when we went upstairs
that we might kiss each other unseen. I tell you, it revolts my
soul, from love and from you! I should be perfectly willing to take
all the blame--I do; only I have led you to like that (or to act as
if you did) and I must stop it. Can you not understand how hateful
it is to me to think of making you anything that I should be
disgusted with?

I expect you to read over this letter until you realize that it is,
every word of it, completely true and noble, and until you can write
me so. You and I are to feel ourselves two school-children and live
just so. It is not usual for school-children to marry, but that we
dare upon the strength of our purpose, and in defiance of all
counsel, and of every precedent. We are to feel that we owe our duty
to our ideal; and that simply _because_ of the strength and passion
of our love for each other, we demand perfection, each of the other.
My setting this stern challenge before you is nothing but my
determination to give you my right love, to demand that you be a
perfect woman.

I promise you therefore no quarter; I shall make no sacrifice of my
ideal for your sake. As I wrote you, I mean to be absolutely one
with you, and I expect you to be the same. You shall have (if you
wish it) all of my soul--I shall live my life with you and think all
my thoughts aloud--study to give you _everything_ that I have. And
God only, who knows my heart, knows what utter love for you lies in
those words, what utter trust of you--how I think of you as being
purity and holiness itself. To offer to take any other being into my
soul, to lay bare all the secret places of it to its gaze, all the
weaknesses as well as all the strength, and all that is vain as well
as all that is sacred! You cannot know how I feel about my heart,
but this you may know, that no one else has had a glimpse of it, you
are the first and the last; and so sure am I of you that I dare to
say it, _all_ my life will I live in your presence, and trust to
your sympathy and truth--and feel that I am false to love if I do
not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to
speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love;
or any vanity or foible--such things are really hardest to have
others know, so great is our conceit.

If I could talk to you to-night, I should do just as I did up on the
hill in the moonlight--frighten you, and make you wonder if there
was _any_ woman who wished to bear such a burden; and perhaps the
saddest thing of all to me is that I do not bear it--instead I bear
the gnawing of a conscience bitter and ashamed of itself. And could
you bear _that_ burden? For Corydon, as I look at myself to-night, I
am before God, a coward and a dastard! I have not done my work! I
have not borne the pain He calls me to bear, I have not wrested out
the strength He put in my secret heart! And here I am chattering,
_talking_ about work to you! And these things are like a nightmare
to me; they turn all my life's happiness to gall. And you are taking
upon yourself this same burden--coming to help me to get rid of it.
Or if you do not wish to, for God's sake, and mine, and yours, don't
come near me--you have come too near as it is! Can you not see that
when I am face to face with these fearful things--and you come and
ask me to give my life to you, to worship you with the best
faculties I possess--that I have no right to say yes?

You once told me you were happy because I called you "mein guter
Geist, mein bess'res Ich"; well, you are not in the least that. The
name that I give you, and that you may keep, is "the beautiful
possibility of a soul". Remember a phrase I told you at the very
beginning of our love, of the peril of "ceasing to love perfection
and coming to love a woman." And read Shelley's sad note to
"Epipsychidion"!