Chapter L: Section 10: And then came the reaction--the most awful experience of

his life. Thyrsis was sitting upon the bed, and staring in front of him, dazed. He was exhausted, faint, shuddering with horror. “Oh, my God, my God!” he whispered.

What had he done? Corydon, the gentle and pure--she had trusted herself to him, and how had he treated her? He had tortured her, he had defiled her! Oh, it was sickening; brutal, like a butchery! He sunk down in a heap, moaning, “My God! I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!”

And then a strange thing happened--the strangest of all strange things! An unforeseeable, an unimaginable thing!

Corydon had started up, and was listening; and now suddenly he felt her arms stealing about him. “Thyrsis!” she whispered. “Thyrsis!”

“Oh, what shall I do?” he sobbed.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, it was so horrible! horrible!”

“Thyrsis!” she panted, swiftly. “Don’t say that!”

“How could I have done it?” he rushed on. “What a monster I am!”

“No! no!” she cried. “You don’t understand, I love you! Don’t you know that I love you?”

And she tightened her clasp about him, she stole into his arms again. “Forgive me!” she whispered. “Please, please--forgive me, Thyrsis!”

He stared at her, dazed. “Forgive _you_?”

“I had no right to behave like that!” she cried. “I was afraid--I couldn’t control myself. But oh, Thyrsis, I love you!”

And she pressed herself upon him convulsively; she was troubled no longer. “Yes!” she panted. “Yes! I don’t mind it any more! I am yours! I am yours! You may do whatever you please to me, Thyrsis--I love you!”

She covered him with kisses--his face, his neck, his body. She drew him down to her again, whispering in ecstasy, “_My husband!_”

He was lost in amazement. Could this be Corydon, the gentle and shrinking? No, she was gone; and in her stead this creature of desire--tumultuous and abandoned! She was like some passion-goddess out of the East, shameless and terrible and destroying! She was like a tigress of the jungle, calling in the night for its mate. She locked him fast in her arms--she was swept away in a whirlwind of emotion, as he had been swept before. And all her being rose up in one song of exultation--“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!”

“Ah, Thyrsis!” she cried. “My Thyrsis! I belong to you now! You can never escape me now! You can never leave me--my love, my love!”

And as Thyrsis listened to this song, his passion died. Reason awoke again, and a cold fear struck into his heart! What was the meaning of _this?_

Long hours afterward, as she lay, half-asleep, in his arms, she felt him give a sudden start and shudder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said--“I just happened to think of something. Something that frightened me.”

“What was it?”

“I was thinking, dear--_suppose I should become domestic!_”