“I am trying to do right.”
“Yet greater wrong than this can no man do on earth—lead, captivate the soul and body of a gracious and innocent girl, teach her the miracle of love in motherhood, and then desert her for a fairer and younger face.”
“But, father, I cannot live a lie.”
“Then you will cherish, honour, love and protect your wife until death; and the old marriage ceremony read, ‘until death us depart.’ Your vow is eternal and goes beyond the physical incident of death itself.”
“Yet how can I control the beat of my heart? We must go back to the reality of Nature and her eternal laws, in spite of illusions and theories,” maintained the younger man.
“Ah, my boy, these things you call illusions I call the great faiths of our fathers, the revelation of God. Call them what you will, even if we say they are illusions, they are blessed illusions. They are the steel bars behind which we have caged the crouching, blind and silent forces of nature, fierce, savage and cruel as death.”
His voice sank to a whisper, he leaned over and placed his trembling hand on Gordon’s arm and added:
“I once felt the impulse to kill a man. It was natural, elemental and all but overpowering. Remember that civilisation itself is impossible without tradition. I know that progress is made only by its modification in growth. But growth is not destruction, and progress is never backward to beast or savage. Marriage is not a mere convention between a man and a woman, subject to the whim of either party. It is a divine social ordinance on which the structure of human civilisation has been reared. It cannot be broken without two people’s consent and the consent of society, and then only for great causes which have destroyed its meaning.”
“But I have begun to question, father, whether our civilisation is civilised and worth preserving?”
“And would you civilise it by giving free rein to impulses of nature that are subconscious, that lead direct to the reign of lust and murder? Is not man more than brute? Has he not a soul? Is the spirit a delusion? Ah, my boy, do you doubt my love?”