“Nobody has any idea of what we mean!” exclaimed Corydon.
“No idea whatever,” he said. “They’ve nothing in them in anyway to correspond with it. You talk to them about souls, and they haven’t any. You talk to them about love, and they think you mean obscenity. Everybody is thinking obscenity about us!”
“Everybody but our parents,” put in Corydon.
To which he answered, angrily, “They are thinking of what the others are thinking.”
But everybody seemed to have to think something, and that was the aspect of the matter that puzzled them most. Why did everybody find it necessary to be thinking about it at all? Why did everybody consider it his business? As Thyrsis phrased it—“Why the hell can’t they let us alone?”
“We’ve got to get married,” said she. “That’s the only way to get the best of them.”
“But is that really getting the best of them?” he objected. “Isn’t that their purpose—to make us get married?”
This was a pregnant question, but they did not follow it up just then. They went on to the practical problem of where and when and how to accomplish their purpose.
“We can go to a court,” said he.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “We’d have to meet a lot of men, and I couldn’t stand it.”