In most of these things she was his teacher. For Corydon was one person, in body, mind and soul; in her there were no disharmonies, no warring elements. His friend the doctor had set forth his idea of “a good woman”; but Corydon’s goodness proved to be after no such pattern. Now that she was his, she was his; she belonged to him, she was a part of him, and there could be no thought of a secret shame, of any reserves or hesitations. Her body was herself, and it was joy to her; it was joy the more, because she could give it for love; and she sought for new ways to utter the completeness of her giving. She was like a little child about it--so free, so spontaneous, so genuine; Thyrsis marvelled at her utter naturalness. For himself, in the midst of these things, there was always a sense of the strange and the terrible, a sense of penetrating to forbidden mysteries; but Corydon laughed in the sunlight of utter bliss--and she laughed most at him, when she found that her simple language had startled him. For the maiden out of ancient Greece was now become a lover! And so she was revealed to Thyrsis--she who might have marched in the Panathenaic processions, with one of the sacred vessels in her hands, or run in the Attic games, bare-limbed and fearless. So he learned to think of her, singing in the myrtle groves Of Mount Hymettus, or walking naked in the moonlight in Arcadian meadows. So he thought of her all through her life, whenever a moment of joy came to her--whenever, for instance, she found her way to the water. They had dressed her in long skirts and put her in a drawing-room--but Corydon had got to the water in spite of them; and all that any Nereid had ever known, that she had known from the time the waves first kissed her feet. And so it was also with love; she was born to be a priestess of love’s religion. She had waited for this hour--that she might take his hand, and lead him into the temple, and teach him the ritual. It was a ministry that she entered upon with the joy of all her being. “Ah, let me teach you how to love!” she would cry. “Ah, let me teach you how to love!” Love was to her an utter blending of two selves, the losing of one’s personality in another’s; it meant the forgetting of one’s self, and all the ends of self. And Thyrsis marvelled at the glory that came upon her, at each new rapture she discovered. All the language of lovers was known to her, all the songs of lovers were upon her lips: “Du bist mir ewig, Bist mir immer-- Erb und Eigen Ein und All!” Such was her woman’s gift: precious beyond all treasures of earth, and given without price or question. And Thyrsis trembled as he realized it; he lived upon his knees before her, and floods of tenderness welled up in his heart. How utterly she trusted him, how completely she belonged to him! And what could he do to show himself worthy of it--this most wonderful dream of his life come true--