“I love you, I love you!” he sobbed.
And she replied, “Then I’ll stay. I’ll bear anything, if you need me—if I can be of any use at all.”
Section 19. So their tears were mingled; so once more, being sufficiently plowed up with agony, they might behold the deeps of each other’s souls. Being at their last gasp, and driven to desperation, they would make the convulsive effort, and break the crust of dullness and commonplace, and reveal again the mighty forces hidden in their depths. At such hours he beheld Corydon as she was, the flaming spirit, the archangel prisoned in the flesh. If only he could have found the key to those deep chambers, so that he could have had access to them always!
But alas, they knew only one path that led to them, and that through the valley of despair. From despair it led to anguished struggle, and from struggle to defiance, to rage and denunciation—and thence to visions and invocations, raptures and enthralments. So this night, for instance, behold Corydon, first holding her husband’s hands, and shuddering with awe, and pledging her faith all over again; and then, later on, when the dawn was breaking, sitting in the cold moonlight with a blanket flung about her, her wild hair tossing, and in her hand the revolver with which she had meant to destroy herself. Behold her, making sport of her own life-drama—turning into wildest phantasy her domestic ignominies, her inhibitions and her helpmate’s blunderings; evoking the hosts of the future as to a festival, rehearsing the tragedy of her soul with all posterity as her audience. When once these mad steeds of her fancy were turned loose, one could never tell where their course would be; and strange indeed were the adventures that came to him who rode with her!
There seemed to be no limit to the powers of this subliminal woman within Corydon. Her cheeks would kindle, her eyes would blaze, and eloquence would pour from her—the language of great poetry, fervid and passionate, with swift flashes of insight and illumination, tumultuous invocations and bursts of prophecy. Thyrsis would listen and marvel. What a mind she had—sharp, like a rapier, swift as the lightning-flash! The powers of penetration and understanding, and above all the sheer splendors of language—the blazes of metaphor, the explosions of coruscating wit! What a tragic actress she might have made—how she would have shaken men’s souls, and set them to shuddering with terror! What an opera-singer she could have been, with that rich vibrant voice, and the mien of a disinherited goddess!
It was out of such hours that the faith of their lives was made; and it was out of them also that Thyrsis formed his idea of woman. To him woman was an equal; and this he not only said with his lips, he lived it in his feelings. The time came when he went out into the world, and learned to understand the world’s idea, that woman meant vanity and pettiness and frivolity; but Thyrsis let all this pass, knowing the woman-soul. Somewhere underneath, not yet understood and mastered, was pent this mighty force that in the end would revolutionize all human ideas and institutions. Here was faith, here was vision, here was the power of all powers; and how was it to be delivered and made conscious, and brought into the service of life?
Most women liked Thyrsis, because they divined in some vague way this attitude; and some men hated him for the same reason. These men, Thyrsis observed, were the slave-drivers; they held that woman was the weaker vessel, and for this they had their own motives. There were women, too, who liked to be ruled; but Thyrsis never argued with them—it was enough, he judged, to treat any slave as a free man, or any servant as a gentleman, and sooner or later they would divine what he meant, and the spirit of revolt would begin to flicker.