“Yes!” exclaimed the doctor. “That’s what they all say! Not a day passes that some woman doesn’t sit in this office and say it! Each case is different from any other case that ever was or could be. They tell me how much they suffer, and what a state their nerves are in, and how busy they are, and how poor they are--their social duties, and their artistic duties, and their religious duties, and their philanthropic duties! And they weep and wring their hands, and tell me agonizing stories, and they offer me any sum I could ask--many a time I might earn a thousand dollars by something that wouldn’t take me ten minutes, if only I didn’t have a conscience!--Go away, boy, and get those ideas out of your head!” Section 4. So Thyrsis went away, with a new realization of the seriousness of his position, with a new sense of the grip in which he was fast. It was a conspiracy of Nature, a conspiracy of all the world! It was a Snare! All through this love-adventure, even when most under the sway of his emotions, Thyrsis’ busy mind had been groping and reaching for an understanding of it. Little by little this had come to him--and now the picture was complete. He had beheld the last scene of the panorama; he had got to the moral of the tale! He had been the sport of cosmic forces, of the blind and irresistible reproductive impulse of Nature. Step by step he had been driven, he had played his part according to the plan. He had hesitated and debated and resolved and decided--thinking that he had something to do with it all! But now he looked back, and saw himself as a leaf swept along by a torrent. And all the while the torrent had known its destination! He had had many plans and many purposes, but always Nature had had but one plan and one purpose--which was the Child! Twelve months ago Thyrsis had been a boy, carefree and happy, rapt in his dream of art; and now here he was, a married man, with the cares of parenthood on his shoulders! If anyone had told him that a trick could be played upon him, he would have laughed at them. How confident he had been--how certain of his mastery of life! And now he was in the Snare! Dismayed as he was, Thyrsis could not but smile as he realized it. The artist in him appreciated the technique of the performance. How cunningly it had all been managed--how cleverly the device had been hidden how shrewdly the bait had been selected! He went back over the adventure. What a fuss he and Corydon had made about it! What a vast amount of posturing and preluding, of backing and filling! And how solemnly they had taken it--how earnestly they had believed in the game! What convictions had weighed upon them, what exaltations had thrilled them--two pitiful little puppets, set here and there by unseen hands! Rehearsing from prologue to curtain the age-long drama, the drama of Sex that had been played from the beginning of the world!