“And he thinks you distrust him,” she went on—“just because he’s orthodox. But he’s really not half as backward as you think. His faith means a great deal to him. I only wish I had such a faith in my own life.”
To which Thyrsis responded, “God knows, my dear, I wish you had.”
Section 11. The young clergyman came to call the next afternoon, and the three sat upon the lawn and talked. They talked about Florida, and then about Socialism—as was inevitable, after Thyrsis had described the population of the East Coast hotels. But he felt constrained and troubled—he did not know just how a man should conduct himself with his wife’s lover; and so in the end he excused himself and strolled off.
He came back as Mr. Harding was leaving; and it seemed to him that the other’s face wore a look of pain and distress. Also, at supper he noted that Corydon was ill at ease.
“Something has gone wrong with your program?” he inquired.
To which Corydon answered, “Mr. Harding thinks he ought not to come any more.”
“Not come any more?”
“He says I don’t need him now. And he thinks—he thinks it isn’t right. He’s afraid to come.”
And so a week passed, and the young clergyman was not seen again. Thyrsis noticed that his wife was silent a great deal; and that when she did talk, she talked about Mr. Harding. His heart ached to see her as she was, so pitifully weak and appealing. She was scarcely able to walk alone yet; and she complained also that her mind had been weakened by the frightful ordeal she had undergone. It exhausted her to do any thinking at all; and she seemed to have forgotten nearly all she knew—there were whole subjects upon which her mind appeared to be a blank.
So he gave up trying to think about his book, and went about all day pondering this new problem. It was one of the laws of the marriage state that he must suffer whenever she suffered. It was never permitted to him to question the reality of any of her emotions; if they were real to her, they were real in the only sense that counted; and he must take them with the entire tragic seriousness that she took them, he must regard them as inevitable and fatal. For himself, he could change or suppress emotions—that ability was the most characteristic fact about him; but Corydon could not do it, and so he was not permitted to do it. That would be to manifest the “cold” and “stern” self, which was to Corydon an object of abhorrence and fear.