“My boy,” said the man, “she’d die first!”
Thyrsis was staring at him, amazed.
“Let me tell you a little about a good woman,” said the other. “I’ve been married for thirty years—really married, I mean; we’ve got five children. And in all those thirty years my wife has never made an advance of that sort to me!”
After which the doctor went on to expound his philosophy of sex. “Love is just a little thing to you,” he said; “you’ve got your books and your career. And you want it to be the same with Corydon—you’ve succeeded in persuading her that that’s what she wants also. You’re going to make her a copy of yourself! But you simply can’t do it, boy—she’s a woman. And a woman’s one interest in the world is love—it’s everything in life to her, the thing she’s made for. And if you deprive her of love, whole love, I mean, you wreck her entirely. Just now is the time when she ought to be having her children, if she’s ever to have any—and you’re trying to satisfy her with music and philosophy!”
“But,” cried Thyrsis, horrified, “I know she doesn’t feel that way at all!”
“Maybe not,” said the other. “Her eyes are not opened. It’s your business to open them. What are you a man for?”
“But—she’s all right as she is—-”
“Isn’t she nervous?”
“Why, yes—perhaps—-”
“Isn’t she sometimes melancholy? And doesn’t she like you to kiss her? Doesn’t she show she’s happy when you hold her in your arms.”