g!--that neither
argument nor importunity could break down. Was there something lacking
in me? or was it that I feared to mar or destroy the love she had. This,
surely, had not been the fashion of other loves, called unlawful, the
classic instances celebrated by the poets of all ages rose to mock me.

"Incurably romantic," she had called me, in calmer moments, when I was
able to discuss our affair objectively. And once she declared that I had
no sense of tragedy. We read "Macbeth" together, I remember, one rainy
Sunday. The modern world, which was our generation, would seem to be
cut off from all that preceded it as with a descending knife. It was
precisely from "the sense of tragedy" that we had been emancipated: from
the "agonized conscience," I should undoubtedly have said, had I been
acquainted then with Mr. Santayana's later phrase. Conscience--the old
kind of conscience,--and nothing inherent in the deeds themselves, made
the tragedy; conscience was superstition, the fear of the wrath of the
gods: conscience was the wrath of the gods. Eliminate it, and behold!
there were no consequences. The gods themselves, that kind of gods,
became as extinct as the deities of the Druids, the Greek fates, the
terrible figures of German mythology. Yes, and as the God of Christian
orthodoxy.

Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths, of whose personal
lives we happened to know something? Had not these great ones broken
with impunity all the laws of traditional morality? They ground the
faces of the poor, played golf and went to church with serene minds,
untroubled by criticism; they appropriated, quite freely, other men's
money, and some of them other men's wives, and yet they were not haggard
with remorse. The gods remained silent. Christian ministers regarded
these modern transgressors of ancient laws benignly and accepted their
contributions. Here, indeed, were the supermen of the mad German prophet
and philosopher come to life, refuting all classic tragedy. It is true
that some of these supermen were occasionally swept away by disease,
which in ancient days would have been regarded as a retributive scourge,
but was in fact nothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene,
the result of overwork. Such, though stated more crudely, were my
contentions when desire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent.
And I did not fail to remind Nancy, constantly, that this was the path
on which her feet had been set;