Chapter XLVI: Section 6: The doctor announced that he had a little dyspepsia, and gave

him a bottle full of a red liquid that would digest his food. Also he warned him to eat slowly, and to rest after meals. And Thyrsis, after thanking him, had started to go; when the doctor, who was an old friend of both families, asked the question, “How’s Corydon?”

“She’s pretty well,” said Thyrsis.

“And are you expecting any children yet?” asked the other, with a smile.

Thyrsis started. “Heavens, no!” he said.

“Why not?” asked the doctor.

“We aren’t going to have any.”

“But why? Are you preventing it?”

Thyrsis hesitated a moment. “We’re not living that way,” he said.

The doctor stared at him. “Come here, boy,” he said, “and sit down.”

Thyrsis obeyed.

“Now tell me what you mean,” said the other.

“I mean that we--we’re just brother and sister,” said Thyrsis.

“But--why did you get married?”

“We got married because we wanted to study.”

“To study what?”

“Well, everything--music, principally.”

“And how long do you expect to keep that up?”

“Oh, for a good many years--until we’ve accomplished something, and until we’ve got some money.”

And the doctor sank back and drew his breath. “I don’t wonder your stomach’s out of order!” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Thyrsis.

But the man did not answer that question. Instead he asked, “Don’t you realize what you’ll do to Corydon?”

“What?”

“You’ll wreck her whole life--her health, to begin with.”

“But how, doctor? She’s perfectly happy. It’s what we both want to do.”

“But doesn’t she love you?”

“Why, yes--but not that way.”

The doctor smiled. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Because--she’s told me so.”

“And if it was otherwise--do you think she’d tell you that?”

“Why, of course she would.”

“My boy,” said the man, “she’d die first!”

Thyrsis was staring at him, amazed.

“Let me tell you a little about a good woman,” said the other. “I’ve been married for thirty years--really married, I mean; we’ve got five children. And in all those thirty years my wife has never made an advance of that sort to me!”

After which the doctor went on to expound his philosophy of sex. “Love is just a little thing to you,” he said; “you’ve got your books and your career. And you want it to be the same with Corydon--you’ve succeeded in persuading her that that’s what she wants also. You’re going to make her a copy of yourself! But you simply can’t do it, boy--she’s a woman. And a woman’s one interest in the world is love--it’s everything in life to her, the thing she’s made for. And if you deprive her of love, whole love, I mean, you wreck her entirely. Just now is the time when she ought to be having her children, if she’s ever to have any--and you’re trying to satisfy her with music and philosophy!”

“But,” cried Thyrsis, horrified, “I know she doesn’t feel that way at all!”

“Maybe not,” said the other. “Her eyes are not opened. It’s your business to open them. What are you a man for?”

“But--she’s all right as she is---”

“Isn’t she nervous?”

“Why, yes--perhaps---”

“Isn’t she sometimes melancholy? And doesn’t she like you to kiss her? Doesn’t she show she’s happy when you hold her in your arms.”

Thyrsis sat mute.

“You see!” said the other, laughing. “The girl is in love with you, and you haven’t sense enough to know it.”

Again Thyrsis could find no words. “But if we had a child it would ruin us!” he cried, wildly. “I’ve not a cent, and my whole career’s at stake!”

“Well,” said the other, “if it’s as bad as that, don’t have any children yet.”

“But--but how _can_ we?”

“Don’t you know how to control it?”

Thyrsis was staring at him, open-eyed. “Why, no!” he said.

“Good lord!” laughed the other. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

And then the doctor proceeded to explain to him the “artificial sterilization of marriage.” No whisper of such a thing had ever come to the boy before, and he could hardly credit his ears. But the doctor spoke of it as a man of the world, to whom it was a matter of course; he went into detail as to the various methods that people used. And when finally Thyrsis rose to leave he patted him indulgently on the shoulder, and laughed, “Go home to your wife, my boy!”