Chapter CCIV: Section 14: Thyrsis read this letter over two or three times; and then,

resisting the impulse to elaborate his exposition of the economic bases of the marriage institution, he took it in to town and mailed it. He waited eagerly for a reply the next day; but no reply came.

The morning after that, he walked down to town as he had agreed to, and called at Mr. Harding’s home. The door was opened by his housekeeper, Delia Gordon’s aunt. “Is Mr. Harding in?” asked Thyrsis.

“He’s gone up to the city,” was the reply.

“To the city,” said Thyrsis. “When did he go?”

“He left this morning.”

“And when will he be back?”

“I don’t know. He left rather suddenly, and he didn’t say.”

“I see,” said Thyrsis. “Tell him I called, please.”

And so he went home and mailed another note to Mr. Harding, asking him to make an appointment for a meeting; after which he waited for three or four days--but still there came no reply.

“Have you heard anything more from Mr. Harding?” he asked of Corydon, finally.

“No, dear,” she answered. “I don’t expect to hear.” But he saw that she was nervous and _distrait_; and he knew by her unwonted interest in the mail that she was all the time hoping to get some word from him.

When it came to handling any affair with Corydon, Thyrsis was a poor diplomatist. He would tell himself that this or that should be kept from her for the present; but the secrecy always irked him--his impulse was to talk things out with her, to go hand in hand with her to face the facts of their life. So now, in this case; one afternoon he settled her comfortably in a hammock, and sat beside her and took her hand.

“Corydon,” he said, “I’ve something I want to tell you. I’ve been having a correspondence with Mr. Harding.”

She started, and stared at him wildly. “What do you mean?” she gasped.

“I wrote him two letters,” said he.

“What about?”

“I wanted to explain about us,” he said; and then he told her what he had put in the first letter, and read Mr. Harding’s reply, which he had in his pocket.

“What do you make of it?” he asked.

“Tell me what your answer was!” cried Corydon, quickly; and so he began to outline his second letter.

But she did not let him get very far. “You wrote him that way about marriage!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, dear,” said he.

“But, Thyrsis! He’ll be perfectly horrified!”

“You think so?”

“Why, Thyrsis! Don’t you understand? He’s a clergyman!”

“I know; but it’s the truth---”

“You don’t know anything about people at all!” she cried. “Can’t you realize? He doesn’t reason about things like you; you can’t appeal to him in that way!”

“Well, what was I to do---”

“We’ll never see him again!” exclaimed Corydon, in despair.

“That won’t be any worse than it was before, will it?”

“Tell me,” she rushed on, in her agitation. “Did you tell him that I had no idea what you were doing?”

“Of course I told him that.”

“But did you make it perfectly clear to him?”

“I tried to, dear.”

“Tell me what you said! Tell me the rest of the letter.”

And so he recited it, as well as he could, while she listened, breathless with dismay. “How could you!” she cried.

Then she read over Mr. Harding’s letter once more. “You see,” she said; “he was simply dazed. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what to think.”

“He’ll get over it in time. He had to know, somehow.”

“But _why_ did he have to know? Why couldn’t things have stayed as they were?”

“But my dear, you are in love with the man, aren’t you?”

“But I don’t want to marry him, Thyrsis! I don’t--I don’t love him enough.”

“You might have come to it in the course of time,” he replied.

“Don’t you see that he’d have to give up being a clergyman?” she exclaimed.

“That’s been done before,” he said.

“But--see it from his point of view! Think of the scandal!”

“I don’t think much about scandals,” Thyrsis answered. “That part could be arranged.”

“But do the laws give people divorces in that way?”

“Our divorce laws are relics of feudalism,” he answered. “One does not take them seriously.”

“But how can you get around them, Thyrsis?”

“You simply have to admit whatever offense they require.”

“But Thyrsis! Think how that would seem to Mr. Harding!”

“My dear,” he answered, “if I knew that a divorce was necessary to your happiness, I would take upon myself whatever disgrace was necessary.”

Corydon sat gazing at him. “Is it so easy to give me up?” she asked.

“It wasn’t easy at all, my dear,” he answered. “It was a fight that I fought out.”

“But you decided that you could do it!” she exclaimed; and that, he found, was the aspect of the matter that stayed with her in the end. It seemed a poor sort of compliment he had paid her; and how could he make real to her the pangs the decision had cost him? He expected her to take that for granted--in all these years, had he not been able to convince her of his love?

It was the old story between them, he reflected; he was always being called upon to express his feelings, and always reluctant to attempt it. Just now she wanted him to enter upon an eloquent exposition of how he had suffered and hesitated before he mailed the letter; and she would hang upon his words, and drink them in greedily--and of course, the more convincing he made them, the more she would love _him_.

She could never leave him, she insisted--the idea of giving him up was madness. She had not meant any such thing by falling in love with Mr. Harding. Why must he be so elemental, so brutally direct? He was like some clumsy animal, blundering about in the garden where she kept her sentimental plants. He frightened her, as he had frightened Mr. Harding. She stood appalled at this thing which he had done; the truth being that his action had sprung from a certain deep conviction in him, which he never found courage to utter to her.