“I had never thought of it just so,” said the girl. “But surely there must be a personal love in the beginning.”
“I don’t know,” he responded. “I hadn’t thought about that. I’m afraid I’m impersonal by nature.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s what has puzzled me. Don’t you love human beings?”
“Not as a rule,” he confessed.
“But then—what is it you are interested in? Yourself?”
“People tell me that’s the case. And there’s a sense in which it’s true—I’m wrapped up in the thought of myself as an art-work. I’ve a certain vision of the possibilities of my own being, and I’m trying to realize it. And if I do, then I can write books and communicate it to other people, so that they can judge it, and see if it’s any better than the vision they have. It is a higher kind of unselfishness, I think.”
“I see,” said Corydon. “It’s not easy to understand.”
“No one understands it,” he replied. “People are taught that they must sacrifice themselves for others; and they do it, blindly and stupidly, and never ask if the other person is worthy of the sacrifice—and still less if they themselves have anything worth sacrificing.”
Corydon had clenched her hands suddenly. “How I hate the religion of self-sacrifice!” she cried.
“Mine is a religion of self-development,” said Thyrsis. “I am sacrificing myself for what other people ought to be.”
Section 4. They came back after a time, to the subject of love; and to the ideal of it which Thyrsis meant to set forth in the book. It was the duty of every soul to seek the highest potentiality of which it had vision; and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the person he loved. There could be no higher love than this—to treat the thing beloved as one’s self, to be perpetually dissatisfied with it, to scourge it to new endeavor, to hold it in immortal discontent.
This was a point about which they argued with eager excitement. To Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be held before the loved one; whereas Corydon argued that love must exist before such a union could be thought of. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone as she maintained the thesis that the princess could not go with the minstrel unless his love was given to her irrevocably.
“If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pursuit of an ideal, then I agree with you,” said Thyrsis. “But if you mean what love generally means—a mutual admiration, the worshipping of another personality—then I don’t.”
“And are lovers not even to be interesting to each other?” cried Corydon.
But the poet did not shrink even from that. “I don’t think a woman could be interesting to me—except in so far as she was growing. And she must always know that if she stopped growing, she would cease to be interesting. That is not a matter of anybody’s will, it seems to me—it is a fact of soul-chemistry.”
“I don’t think you will find many women to love you on that basis,” said Corydon.
“I never expected to find but one,” was Thyrsis’ reply; “and I may not find even one.”
She sat watching him for a moment. “I had never realized the sublimity of your egotism,” she said. “It would never occur to you to judge anyone else by your own standards, would it?”
“That is very well put,” laughed Thyrsis. “As a matter of fact, I have a maxim that I count all things lost in the world but my own soul.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I can depend on my own soul; and I have not yet met anything else in life of which I can say that.”
Again there was a pause. “You are as hard as iron!” exclaimed the girl.
“I am harder than anything you can find for your simile,” he answered. “I know simply that there is no force existing that can turn me from my task.”
“You might meet some woman who would fascinate you.”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “I have done things I’m ashamed of, and I’ve a wholesome fear of doing more of them. But I know that that woman, whoever she might be, would wake up some morning and find me missing.”
Then for a while he sat staring at the eddies in the pool below. “I have a vision of another kind of woman,” he said—“a woman to whom my ideal would be the same compelling force that it is to me—a living thing that would drive her, that she was both master of, and slave to, as I am. So that she would feel no fears, and ask no favors! So that she would not want mercy, nor ask pledges—but just give herself, as I give myself, and take the chances of the game. Don’t you think there may be just one such woman in the world?”
“Perhaps,” was the reply. “But then—mightn’t a woman be sure of your ideal, but not of you?”
“As to that,” said Thyrsis, “she would have to know me.
“As to that,” said Corydon, “she would have to love you.”
And Thyrsis smiled. “As in most arguments,” he said, “it’s mainly a matter of definitions.”
Section 5. At this point there came a call from the distance, and Corydon started. “There is mother,” she exclaimed. “How the afternoon has flown!”
“And must you go home now?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “We have a long row.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to advise you about books to read. You must let me help you to find what you are seeking.”
“Ah,” said Corydon, “if you only will!”
“I will do anything I can,” he said. “I am ashamed of not having helped you before.”
They had risen and started towards the house. “Can’t you come to-morrow, and we can talk it over,” he said.
“But I thought you were going to work,” she objected.
“I can spare another day,” he replied. “A rest won’t hurt me, I know. And it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you this afternoon.”
So they settled it; and Thyrsis saw them off in the boat, and then he went back to the little cabin.
On the steps he stood still. “Corydon!” he muttered. “Little Corydon!”
That was always the way he thought of her; not only because he had known her when she was a child, but because this expressed his conception of her—she was so gentle and peaceable and meek. She was now eighteen, and he was only twenty, but he felt towards her as a grandfather might. But now had come this new revelation, that astonished him. She had been deeply stirred by his work—she had loved it; and this was no affectation, it was out of her inmost heart. And she was not really contented at all—she had quite a hunger for life in her!
It had been like an explosion; the barriers had been destroyed between them, and he saw her as she really was. And he could hardly believe it—all through the adventures that followed he would find himself standing in the same kind of daze, whispering to himself—“Corydon! Little Corydon!”
He did not try to do any work that evening. He thought about her, and the problem of her life. She had stirred him strangely; he saw her beautiful with a new kind of beauty. He resolved that he would put her upon the way to some of the joy she sought.
She came early the