“Now that sounds queer, but it is the truth, isn’t it, Robert?” he said, with translucent, beautiful orbs raised in integrity. For Reginald was having an amazing good time, telling the truth as he understood it. But then he went on and told other truths so simply and helpfully, that they began to fear he was really getting sick again. “See that? Now look at that,” he said. “I have been listening to you, to see how much you would bear in the way of real endeavor at truth-tellings. And now, when I speak as plainly as I can, you think my brain is giving way. Now listen to me. If a lot of good men and women don’t speak the truth about this matter of love, a lot of good brains will give way under the contradictory teachings that some sorts of churches are by silence consenting to, while protecting men in debauching woman-power, in marriage and out. Protestant churches never, in my experience of their doings, assist women to establish themselves on their own moral heights; even though these churches know that, standing thus and there, women would lift men up to these heights, and so easily hasten forward man’s truly human development. Besides, such women’s sons would be born right the first time, and have less need of a second birth. Woman could do so much for us if we would only give her a fair chance to work according to her genius. “You know how it was with LAURA?” Nothing could exceed his tenderness and devotion as Reginald uttered this name, once so dear to Petrarch. And then, as if reciting a memorized matter he went on in his distant, ventriloquized voice: “If that idolized object of Petrarch’s vehement passion had not held to her rectitude (notwithstanding the harsh vicissitudes of her home), that man Petrarch would never have known that _that_ woman’s personal attractions were not her _real_ charm for him. For that _they_ were excelled by her inherent moral glory and her spiritual-percipience. “He would not have known that what he really adored was her _interior_ SELF, which SELF it was his business by the grace of HE-VAH to develop _in himself_. And if by lack of rectitude she had failed of holding him up to the business of understanding her spirit (instead of merely possessing her personal attractions), he might not have learned the truth as to WHAT LOVE FOR WOMAN IS FOUNDATIONED UPON EVEN IN THIS LIFE. And in that case he would not, at her translation to the unseen world, have been carried forward by his love to THE TRIUMPHS OF SELF-DISCOVERY which befalls us when the Lord into his garden comes and the LILIES GROW AND THRIVE.” He was looking straight into the air as one does when remembering (or putting together again) the parts of a total, which, though perfect in its whole, is yet painfully puzzling in its stages of partial development.