He went into a restaurant, and sat down; and in the seat beside him, close at his elbow, was a man. He was a fat man--eating roast pork, and apple-sauce, and mashed potatoes, and bread. And Thyrsis looked at him with wondering eyes. “Man,” he imagined himself saying, “do you know how you came into this world? A thing impish, demoniac--purple and dripping with blood--a spectre of nightmare dreams?” “W-what?” the man gasped. “And you know nothing of the pain that it cost! You have no sense of the strangeness of it! You never think what your coming meant to some woman!” And then--in the seat opposite was a woman; and Thyrsis watched her. “You!” he thought, “a woman! Can it be that you know what you are? The fate that you play with--the power that dwells in you! To create new life, that may be handed down through endless ages!” Thyrsis did not say these things; they were what he wanted to say--what he thought that he ought to say. But then he reminded himself that these things were forbidden; these mighty facts of child-birth, of life-creation--they might not be spoken about! They must be kept hidden, veiled with mystery--if one wished to refer to them, he must employ metaphors and polite evasions. And as Thyrsis sat and thought about this, he clenched his hands. Some day the world would hear about it--some day the world would think about it! Some day people would behold life--would realize what it was and what it meant. They did not realize it now--else how could it be that women, who bore the race with so much pain and sorrow, should be drudges and slaves, or the ornaments and playthings of men? Else how could it be that life, which cost such a fearful price, should be so cheap upon the earth? For every man that lived and walked alive, some woman had had to bear this agony; and yet men were pent up in mines and sweatshops, they were ground up in accidents in factories and mills--nay, worse than that, were dressed up in gaudy uniforms, and armed with rifles and machine-guns, and marched out to slaughter each other by tens and hundreds of thousands! So, as he walked the streets that night, Thyrsis made a vow. Some day he would put before the world this vision that had come to him, some day he would blast men’s souls with it. He would shake them with this horror, he would thrill them with this sense of the infinite preciousness and holiness of life! He would drive it into them like a barbed arrow--that never afterwards in all their lives would they be rid of. Never afterwards would they dare to mock, never afterwards would they be able to rest until these things had been done away with, until these horrors had been driven from the earth. PART II Love’s Captivity BOOK VIII THE CAPTIVE BOUND _They sat with the twilight shadows about them. Memories too poignant assailed them, and her hand trembled as it lay upon his arm. “How strange it was!” she whispered. “Have we kept the faith?”