Chapter CLXVIII: Section 5: All this, of course, was effort utterly wasted. Thyrsis

poured out his pleadings and exhortations, his longing and his pain; and when he had finished, the girl was exactly where she had been before--just as distrustful of “science”, and just as blindly bent upon getting away to her savages and binding up their wounds and baptizing them. And so at last he gave up in despair, and left Delia to go to bed, and went out and sat alone in the moonlight.

Afterwards, though it was long after midnight, Corydon came out and joined him. He saw that she was flushed and trembling with excitement.

“Thyrsis!” she whispered. “That was a marvellous thing!”

He pressed her hand.

“And all thrown away!” she cried.

“You realized that, did you?” he asked.

“I realized many things. Why you set so much store by ideas, for instance! I see that you are right--one has to think straight!”

“It’s like a steam-engine,” said Thyrsis. “It doesn’t matter how much power you get up, or how fast you make the wheels go--unless the switches are set right, you don’t reach your destination.”

“You only land in the ditch!” added Corydon. “And that’s just the way I felt to-night--she’d take your argument every time, and dump it into a ditch. And she’d see it there, and not care.”

“She doesn’t care about facts at all, Corydon. And notice this also--she doesn’t care about succeeding. That’s the thing you must get straight--her religion is a religion of failure! It comes back to that criticism of Nietzsche’s--it’s a slave-morality. The world belongs to the devil; and the idea of taking it away from the devil seems to be presumptuous. Even if it could be done, the attempt would be ‘unspiritual’; for the ‘world’ is something corrupt--something that ought not to be saved. So you see, she’s perfectly willing for the Belgians to have the rubber.”

“‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’!” quoted Corydon.

“Yes, and let Caesar spend them on Cleo de Merode. What she wants is to save the _souls_ of her savages--to baptize them, and to perish gloriously at the work, and then be transported to some future life that is worth while. So you see what the immortality-mongers do with our morality!”

“Ah!” cried Corydon, swiftly. “But that need not be so!”

“But it _is_ so!” he answered.

“No, no!” she protested. “You must not say that! That is giving up--and I felt such a different mood in you to-night! I wanted to tell you--we must do something about it, Thyrsis! It made me ashamed of my own life. Here I am, failing miserably--and all that work crying out to be done! I don’t think I ever had such a sense of your power before--the things you might do, if only you could get free, if only I didn’t stand in your way! Oh, can’t we cast the old mistakes behind us, and go out into the world and preach that message?”

“But, my dear,” said Thyrsis, “that wouldn’t appeal to you always. Your temperament--”

“Never mind my temperament!” she cried. “I am sick of it, ashamed of it; I want the world to hear that trumpet-call! I want you to break your way into the churches--to make them listen to you, and realize their blasphemy of life!”

She caught hold of him and clung to him; he could feel, like an electric shock, the thrill of her excitement. He marvelled at the effect his words had produced upon her--realizing all the more keenly, in contrast with Delia, what a power of _mind_ he had here to deal with. “Dearest,” he said, “I must put these things into my books. You must stand by me and help me to put them into my books!”