“He would not have known that what he really adored was her interior SELF, which SELF it was his business by the grace of HE-VAH to develop in himself. And if by lack of rectitude she had failed of holding him up to the business of understanding her spirit (instead of merely possessing her personal attractions), he might not have learned the truth as to WHAT LOVE FOR WOMAN IS FOUNDATIONED UPON EVEN IN THIS LIFE. And in that case he would not, at her translation to the unseen world, have been carried forward by his love to THE TRIUMPHS OF SELF-DISCOVERY which befalls us when the Lord into his garden comes and the LILIES GROW AND THRIVE.”
He was looking straight into the air as one does when remembering (or putting together again) the parts of a total, which, though perfect in its whole, is yet painfully puzzling in its stages of partial development.
He was looking into the air much as he had been used to do before his recovery of speech, when in mellifluous tones, scarcely audible, he had talked on in a language quite unknown as the listening Ethel upbore his highest intelligence, aiding him as he tried to tell what Petrarch had sought and at last had found in his “VITA SOLITARIA.”
“As it was, after Laura’s translation to the unseen world his love for her spiritualized into a worship for that love-full-of wisdom which our Lord promised to send to lead us into all truth, and which he called ‘the Comforter,’ which was to dwell in disciples of holiness.
“Well would it be for us if we could first, chastely love all womanhood as sisters; and then as mothers, noble and dignified, which is far from being cold and proud. I am sure woman could (if we cleared her way respectfully) put us at our ease with her on her own supernal plane, without descending to us from it. If woman remained on her lawful heights she would leave us men always aspiring toward some veiled and virgin loveliness which would quicken each dulled spirit, and set it free from the chains that bind thought to the person, instead of to the spiritual-principle toward which, in reality, man’s interior nature aspires.
“Of course all this is only saying that woman is a help, able to meet her brother’s painful needs at this fin de siècle. And that she is awfully benevolent to do it, when she has a right to better enjoyments than that of the misery of birthing and burying babies—many of whom are not fit to be born—and to better enjoyment than this taking care of men, who are not fair enough to secure to her those advantages which would enable her to act freely, according to the teachings of supernal light.
“I have always been sure,” added Reginald, “that at a certain stage in man’s development the best thing a wisely-helpful-woman can do for a man, is to set him absolutely free from love to her. That, chained to her no more, she can then, with kind demeanor and dear reserve, explain him to himself by revealing to him the mental-mystery of that finished femininity, which is type and potency of the ‘sleeping beauty’ within his own being,—a sleeping beauty yet to be electrified into activity by man’s strenuous englobement of his brain substance. Thus, a fair face will conduct men by a fairer way to his one means of self-releasement from loving an extraneous self, and will bring him to the treasured bliss which will ne’er abandon the man who attains it! Thus man—like woman—will become wholly sexed: neither male nor female, but-both; being self-whole, self-harmonized, like the lilies of the Resurrection.”
Robert had grasped Reginald’s hand.
A silence had settled upon them.
Then Robert, with smouldering rage, broke forth relative to he—knew—what—