Chapter XXIV: 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.”