But the barriers were down, and there was no building them up again; Thyrsis never even tried, because of the revelation which came to him from Corydon’s side. Corydon was craving, reaching out hungrily for something which she had not in herself, and which life did not give her in sufficiency. She called this thing “love”; and she had no hesitations and no limits to her demand for it. To Thyrsis this “love” was something quite else--it was sustenance and support. To demand it was an act of weakness, and to yield it was a kind of spiritual blood-transfusion. It was the first law of his life-code that every soul must stand upon its own feet and walk its own way; and to surrender that spiritual autonomy was the one blunder for which there could be no pardon. But then--he would argue with himself--what folly it was to talk of such things in their position! They not souls at all--the life of the soul was not for them, the laws of the soul had nothing to do with them. They were two bodies--two miserable and cold and sick and tormented bodies; and with yet a third body, utterly helpless and dependent upon them--in defiance of all the most high-sounding pronouncements about “the soul”! So Thyrsis would mock himself into subjection once more, and go on to play his part as husband and father and head of a household of bodies. He would play the game of “love” as Corydon wanted it played; he would yield to her demands, he would gratify her cravings, he would force himself to take her point of view. But then the other mood would come upon him--the mood that he knew to be the real expression of himself. He would begin the battle of his genius again; he would “hear the echoes afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting”. If one gave one’s self up to the body, and accepted the regimen and the laws of the body, how should the soul ever come to be free? To make such a concession was to pass upon it a sentence of life-imprisonment! So would come to Thyrsis again that sense of the awful tragedy that was impending in their lives. Some day, he knew, he would break out of this prison. Some day, he knew, he would have to be himself, and live his own life! And meanwhile, how pitiful were Corydon’s attempts to shape him to her needs, and to persuade herself that she was succeeding in doing it! She would set forth to him elaborately how much he had improved; how much gentler and more human he was--in contrast with that blind and stupid and egotistical and impossible person she had first known. And with what bitterness Thyrsis would hear this--and how he had to struggle to suppress his feeling! For he knew that those qualities which were so hateful to her, were but the foam cast up to the surface of his soul by the seething of his genius within. When it had ceased altogether, how placid and still would be the pool-and what a beautiful mirror it would make for Corydon to behold her own features in!