Chapter XXII: Section 4: They came back after a time, to the subject of love; and to

the ideal of it which Thyrsis meant to set forth in the book. It was the duty of every soul to seek the highest potentiality of which it had vision; and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the person he loved. There could be no higher love than this--to treat the thing beloved as one’s self, to be perpetually dissatisfied with it, to scourge it to new endeavor, to hold it in immortal discontent.

This was a point about which they argued with eager excitement. To Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be held before the loved one; whereas Corydon argued that love must exist before such a union could be thought of. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone as she maintained the thesis that the princess could not go with the minstrel unless his love was given to her irrevocably.

“If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pursuit of an ideal, then I agree with you,” said Thyrsis. “But if you mean what love generally means--a mutual admiration, the worshipping of another personality--then I don’t.”

“And are lovers not even to be interesting to each other?” cried Corydon.

But the poet did not shrink even from that. “I don’t think a woman could be interesting to me--except in so far as she was growing. And she must always know that if she stopped growing, she would cease to be interesting. That is not a matter of anybody’s will, it seems to me--it is a fact of soul-chemistry.”

“I don’t think you will find many women to love you on that basis,” said Corydon.

“I never expected to find but one,” was Thyrsis’ reply; “and I may not find even one.”

She sat watching him for a moment. “I had never realized the sublimity of your egotism,” she said. “It would never occur to you to judge anyone else by your own standards, would it?”

“That is very well put,” laughed Thyrsis. “As a matter of fact, I have a maxim that I count all things lost in the world but my own soul.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I can depend on my own soul; and I have not yet met anything else in life of which I can say that.”

Again there was a pause. “You are as hard as iron!” exclaimed the girl.

“I am harder than anything you can find for your simile,” he answered. “I know simply that there is no force existing that can turn me from my task.”

“You might meet some woman who would fascinate you.”

“Perhaps,” he replied. “I have done things I’m ashamed of, and I’ve a wholesome fear of doing more of them. But I know that that woman, whoever she might be, would wake up some morning and find me missing.”

Then for a while he sat staring at the eddies in the pool below. “I have a vision of another kind of woman,” he said--“a woman to whom my ideal would be the same compelling force that it is to me--a living thing that would drive her, that she was both master of, and slave to, as I am. So that she would feel no fears, and ask no favors! So that she would not want mercy, nor ask pledges--but just give herself, as I give myself, and take the chances of the game. Don’t you think there may be just one such woman in the world?”

“Perhaps,” was the reply. “But then--mightn’t a woman be sure of your ideal, but not of you?”

“As to that,” said Thyrsis, “she would have to know me.

“As to that,” said Corydon, “she would have to love you.”

And Thyrsis smiled. “As in most arguments,” he said, “it’s mainly a matter of definitions.”