And such was the end of Thyrsis’ career as a play-wright. In return for all his labors and his agonies he received some weeks later a note from Robertson Jones, Inc., to the effect that the books of “The Genius” showed a total deficit of six thousand seven hundred and forty-two dollars and seventeen cents; and accordingly, under the contract, there was nothing due to the author.
BOOK XI. THE TORTURE-HOUSE
They sat in the darkness, watching where the starlight gleamed upon the water.
“We had always hope,” she was saying. “How endlessly we hoped!”
“Could we do it now?” he asked; and after a pause, he quoted from the poem—
“Unbreachable the fort
Of the long-batter’d world uplifts its wall;
And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall!”
Section 1. Thyrsis came home beaten and crushed, worn out with overwork and worry, his heart black with rage and bitterness and despair. He met Corydon in the park, and she listened to his story, white and terrified. She had swallowed all her disappointment, had stayed at home with the baby while he went with the play; and now the outcome of it all was this!
“What are you going to do?” she whispered; and he answered, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”