Chapter LX: Section 9: Many moods of tenderness came to them. He loved to fondle

her, to exchange endearments with her. They gave each other foolish names, after the fashion of lovers the world over; and they would go on to modify these names, and add prefixes and suffixes, until the most ingenious philologist could not have figured out where the names had started. They made new words, also; they invented a whole language for use in these times of illumination, and which Thyrsis denoted by the name of “dam-fool talk”.

One was always discovering new qualities in Corydon. She had as many moods as the lake by which they lived, and it seemed to him that with each mood her whole personality changed--she would even look like another being. There was the every-day Corydon, demure, and rather silent; and then there was the Corydon who lived in the arms of Nature--who swam in the water, a sister of the mermaids, and made herself drunken with the sunlight; and then would come a mood of mischief, and laughter would break from her, and her wit would be such that Thyrsis would sigh for a stenographer. She would make herself a Grecian costume out of a sheet, and dance to music of her own making; or she would put trinkets upon her forehead, and be a gypsy-queen--she could be anything that was wild and exotic and unpremeditated. She had dances for that mood also--she would laugh and caper as merrily as any young witch. But then, again, there would come the Corydon of melancholy and despair; her features would shrink up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, she would seem like a child of ten. Sometimes Thyrsis could laugh her out of such a mood by telling her of her “beady black eyes”; and she did not like to desecrate her eyes.

And now there was a new Corydon--the Corydon who had been chosen of the Lord, the worker of a miracle. This gave new awe to her presence, it set a crown upon her forehead. One morning, in mid-summer, they had come out from their bath, and she stood upon the rock in the sunshine; and suddenly he saw her give a start, and stand transfixed, staring in front of her.

“What is it?” he asked.

Her voice thrilled as she whispered, “Thyrsis! It moved!”

“Moved?” he echoed.

“I felt the child move!” she cried.

And so he came and put his hands upon her body, and together they stood waiting, breathless, as if listening for a far-off sound.

“There! There!” she cried. “Did you feel it?”

Yes, he had felt it. And in all his life had he ever felt anything stranger? The first sign of the new life that was to be--the first hail out of the darkness of nonentity! And truly, to hear that hail was to be rapt into regions of wonder unspeakable!

It was to be a new human soul; a creature like themselves, with a mind of its own, and a sense of responsibility--It would be a man or a woman, independent, self-creating, and knowing naught about this strange inception. And yet, it would be their life also; they had caused it--but for them it would never have been! Blindly, unwittingly, following the guidance of some power greater than themselves, they had called it into being. And in some mysterious and incredible way it would share their qualities; it would be a blending of their natures, a symbol of their union, of the strange fire that had blazed up in them and fused them together. Truly, had they not come here to the essence of love, that great blind force which had ruled and guided all things from Time’s beginning?

They had come to the very making of life, it seemed. And yet, they wondered--were they really there? This new soul that was to be--had they in truth created it? Or had it existed before this? And whence did it come? If it was really the dignified and divine thing that it would someday imagine itself to be, was it not uncanny that it should have come thus--a nameless, half-human, half-animal thing, kicking inside the body of a woman?

It was Being, in all its ineffable mystery, its monstrous and unendurable strangeness. They lived face to face with it, they saw a thousand aspects of it. Sometimes Corydon would be obsessed with the sense of the sheer weight she carried; a burden fastened upon her and not to be got rid of--an imposition and torment to her. Then again, she would see herself in grotesque and even comical lights--as akin to all the animals, a cousin of the patient cow. And then would come a moment of sudden wonder, when she would be transfigured, a being divine, conferring the boon of life upon another.

It was in this last way that Thyrsis thought of her. There was about her a sense of brooding mystery, as of one who walks in the midst of supernatural presences. She would sit for hours gazing before her, like Joan of Arc listening to her voices; and he would be touched with awe, and would kiss her tenderly and with reverence.

This brought new meanings into their love, new meanings into his life; he would clench his hands and vow afresh his battle with the world. How hideous a thing it was that at this time she should be tormented by fears of want and failure! That she should have to go without comforts, that she should even fear to ask for necessities--because she knew how fast his little store of money was going! Other women had children, and they did not have to be haunted by the doubt if it was right to have them, if there would be any place for them in the world. And some of these were selfish and idle women, too--and yet they had everything they needed! And here was Corydon, beautiful and noble, the very soul of devotion--Corydon must be harrowed and tortured! He did not really mind the world’s treatment of himself, but for this treatment of her--ah, someday the world should pay for that! Someday it should do penance for its mockery and its blindness, that had been a blasphemy against the holy spirit itself!

At such times as this he would put his arms about her, and try to whisper something of the pity and grief that filled his heart. He would try to tell her how much he really loved her, how utterly he was devoted to her. Some day she should have her rights, some day he would repay her for all that she had dared for him. And then the tears would come into Corydon’s eyes, and she would answer that she feared nothing and cared about nothing, so long as she had his love.