There came the miracle of the milk. Incessantly the Child’s lips moved, and its hands groped out; it was an embodied demand for new experience--for life, it knew not what. But Nature knew, and had timed the event to this hour. And Thyrsis watched the phenomenon, marvelling--as one marvels at the feat of engineers, who tunnel from opposite sides of a mountain, and meet in the centre without the error of an inch. It was in accordance with the impression which Corydon made upon him, as a dispenser of abundance, a goddess of fruitfulness, that there should have been more milk than the Child needed. The balance had to be drawn off with a little vacuum-pump; and Thyrsis would watch the tiny jets as they sprayed upon the glass bulb. The milk was rich and golden-hued; he tasted it, with mingled wonder and shuddering. These procedures filled the room with a warm, luscious odor, as of a dairy; they were eminently domestic procedures, such as in fancy he had been wont to tease her about. But he had few jests at present--he was in the inner chambers of the temple of life, and hushed and stilled with awe. The things that he had witnessed in that room were never to be forgotten; each hour he pledged himself anew, to the uttermost limits of his life. The voice of skeptic reason was altogether silent in him now. And also he was interested to observe that all protest was ended in Corydon; the impulses of motherhood had now undisputed sway in her. Section 2. BUT even in such an hour of consecration, the sordid world outside would not leave him unmolested. It was as if the black clouds had parted for a moment, while the sunlight poured through; and now again they rolled together. The great surgeon, who had told Thyrsis that he would wait for his money, professed now to have forgotten his agreement. Perhaps he had really forgotten it--who could tell, with the many things he had upon his mind? At any rate, Corydon found herself suddenly confronted with a bill, which she was powerless to pay; with white cheeks and trembling lips she told Thyrsis about it--and so came more worry and humiliation. The very food that she ate became tasteless to her, because she felt she had no right to it; and in a few days she was begging Thyrsis to take her away. So he helped to carry her downstairs, and back to her parents’ home; and then he returned to his own lonely room, and sat for hours in the bitter cold, with his teeth set tightly, and the nails dug into the palms of his hands. It so happened that just then the editor was beginning to change his mind about “The Hearer of Truth”; and so he had new agonies of anxiety and disappointment.