Chapter CXVIII: Section 4: Another month passed by, and still there was no rift in the

clouds. Once more Corydon was forbidden to see him, and so her pain grew day by day. At last there came another letter, voicing utter despertion. Something must be done, she declared, she was slowly going out of her mind. Thyrsis could have no idea of the shamefulness of her position, the humiliations she had to face. “I tell you the thing is putting a brand upon my soul,” she wrote. “It is something I shall never get over all my life. It is withering me up--it is destroying my self-respect, my very decency; it is depriving me of my power to act, or even to think. People come in, relatives or friends--even strangers to me--and peer at me and pry into my affairs; I hear them whispering in the parlor--‘Hasn’t he got a position yet?’ or ‘How can she have anything to do with him?’ The servants gossip about me--the woman I have for a nurse despises me and insults me, and I have not the courage to rebuke her. To-day I went almost wild with fury--I rushed into the bathroom and locked the door and flung myself upon the floor. I found myself gnawing at the rug in my rage--I mean that literally. That is what life has left for me!

“I tell you you must take me away, we must get out of this fiendish city. Let us go into the wilderness as you said, and live as we can--I would rather starve to death than face these things. Let us get into the country, Thyrsis. You can work as a farm-hand, and earn a few dollars a week--surely that could not be a greater strain upon us than the way things are now.”

When Thyrsis received this, he racked his brains once more; and then he sat down and wrote a letter to Barry Creston. He told how he had worked over the play, and how it had gone to ruin; he told of his present plight. He knew, he said, that Mr. Creston had been interested in the play, and that he was a man understood the needs of the artist-life. Would he lend two hundred dollars, which would suffice until Thyrsis could get another work completed?

He waited a week for a reply to this; and when it arrived he opened it with trembling fingers. He half expected a check to fall fluttering to the floor; but alas, there was not a single flutter. “I have read your letter,” wrote the young prince, “and I have considered the matter carefully. I would do what you ask, were it not for my conviction that it would not be a good thing for you. It seems to me the testimony of all experience, that artists do their great work under the spur of necessity. I do not believe that real art can ever be subsidized. It is for men that you are writing; and you must find out how to make men hear you. You may not thank me for this now, but some day you will, I believe.”

After duly pondering which communication, Thyrsis racked his wits, and bethought him of yet another person to try. He sat himself down and addressed Mr. Robertson Jones. He explained that he was in this cruel plight, owing to his having devoted so many months to “The Genius.” Even the actors had received something for the performances of the play they had given; but the author had received nothing at all. He asked Mr. Jones for a personal loan to help him in a great emergency; and he promised to repay it at the earliest possible moment. To which Mr. Jones made this reply--“Inasmuch as the failure of the play was due solely to your own obstinacy, it seems to me that your present experiences are affording exactly the discipline you need.”