"But then--what did he do?"

"He looked at me," she said.

"When he went off the other day--did he know how you still felt?"

"Yes, Thyrsis; why do you ask?"

"I thought you might have been deceiving yourself."'

At which she smiled and replied, "I wouldn't have bothered to tell you in that case."

Section 13. So Thyrsis strolled away, and after duly considering the matter, he sat himself down to compose another letter to the young clergyman.

"My dear Mr. Harding:

"I read your note with a great deal of perplexity. It is evident to me that I have not made the situation clear to you; you probably do not find it easy to realize the frankness which Corydon and I maintain in our relationship. I must tell you at the outset that she has narrated to me what has pa.s.sed between you, and so I am not dealing with 'cruel suspicions', but with facts. Can I not persuade you to do the same?

"It is difficult for me to be sure just what is in your mind. But for one thing, let me make certain that you are not trying to read anything between the lines of what I write you. Please understand I am not angry, or jealous, or suspicious; also, I am not unhappy--at least not so unhappy but that I can stand it. I have stood a good deal of unhappiness in my life, and Corydon has also.

"You tell me about your att.i.tude towards my wife. Of course it may be that as you come to look back upon what has pa.s.sed between you, it seems to you that your feeling for her was not deep and permanent, and that you would prefer not to continue your acquaintance with her. That would be your right--you have not pledged yourself in any way. All that I desire is, that in considering the state of your feelings, you should deal with them, and not with any duty which you may imagine you owe to _me_. I have no claim in the matter, and any that I might have, I forego.

"The crux of the whole difficulty I imagine must lie in what you say about your 'profound belief in the sanct.i.ty of the inst.i.tution of marriage'. That is, of course, a large question to attempt to discuss in a letter. I can only say that I once had such a belief, and that as a result of my studies I have it no longer. I see the inst.i.tution of marriage as a product of a certain phase of the economic development of the race, which phase is rapidly pa.s.sing, if it be not already past. And the inst.i.tution to me seems to share in the evils of the economic phase; indeed I am accustomed, when invited to discuss the inst.i.tution of marriage, to insist upon discussing what actually exists--which is the inst.i.tution of marriage-plus-prost.i.tution.

"Our economic system affords to certain small cla.s.ses of men--to capitalists, to merchants, to lawyers, to clergymen--opportunities of comfort and dignity and knowledge and health and virtue. But to certain other cla.s.ses, and far larger cla.s.ses-to miners, to steel-workers, to garment-makers--it deals out misery and squalor and ignorance and disease and vice. And in the case of women it does exactly the same; to some it gives a sheltered home, with comfort and beauty and peace; while to others it gives a life of loneliness and sterility, and to others a life of domestic slavery, and to yet others only the horrors of the brothel. And when you come to investigate, you find that the difference is everywhere one of economic advantage. The merchant, the lawyer, the clergyman, has education and privilege, he can wait and make his terms; but the miner, the steel-worker, the sweat-shop-toiler, has to sell his labor for what will keep him alive that day. And in the same way with women--some can acquire accomplishments, virtues, charms; and when it comes to giving their love, they can secure the life-contract which we call marriage. But the daughter of the slums has no opportunity to acquire such accomplishments and virtues and charms, and often she cannot hold out for such a bargain--she sells her love for the food and shelter that she needs to keep her alive.

"This will seem radical doctrine to you, I suppose; I have noticed that you take our inst.i.tutions at their face-value, and do not ask how much in them may be sham. But it seems to me there is no need to go into that matter here, for no trespa.s.s upon the marriage obligation is proposed.

The conventions undoubtedly give me the right to be outraged because my wife is in love with another man; I can denounce him, and humiliate her. But if I am willing to forego this right, if I do not care to play Oth.e.l.lo to her Desdemona, what then? Who can claim to be injured by my renunciation?

"Of course I know it is said that marriages are made in Heaven, and that what G.o.d hath joined together, no man may put asunder. But it is difficult for me to imagine that an intelligent man would take this att.i.tude at the present day. If I were dead, you would surely recognize that Corydon might remarry; you would recognize it, I presume, if I were hopelessly insane, or degenerate. What if I were in the habit of getting drunk and maltreating her--would you claim that she was condemned to suffer this for life? Or suppose that I were found to be physically impotent? And can you not recognize the fact that there might be impotence of an intellectual and spiritual sort, which could leave a woman quite as unhappy, and make her life quite as barren and futile?

"Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I have stated correctly the facts between Corydon and myself; that there exists between us a fundamental difference in temperament, which makes it certain that, however much we might respect and admire, and even love each other, we could never either of us be happy as man and wife; and suppose that Corydon were to meet some other man, with whom she could live harmoniously; and that she loved him sincerely, and he loved her; and that I were to recognize this, and be willing that she should leave me--do you mean that you would maintain that such a course was wrong?

And if it were, with whom would the blame be? With her, because she did not condemn herself to a lifetime of failure? Or with me, because I did not desire her to do this--because I did not wish to waste my life-force in trying to content a discontented woman?

"I might add that I have said nothing to Corydon about having written to you; she has no idea that I have thought of such a thing, and she would be horrified at the suggestion. I have taken the responsibility of doing it, realizing that there was no other way in which you could be made acquainted with the true situation. There is much more that I could say about all this, but it seems a waste of time to write it. Can we not meet sometime, and get at each other's point of view? I am going to be in town the day after to-morrow, and unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will drop in to see you some time in the morning."

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 inst.i.tution, 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?"