n, change? A gloomy Hamlet to be sure,
asking "can honor set a leg?"--a subtle Machiavelli believing that might
made right, sure that it was a matter of careful planning, not ethics
which brought success in this world, and yet one of the poorest planners
in it. An anarchistic manifestation of selfishness surely; but his
additional plea was that he did not make his own mind, nor his emotions,
nor anything else. And worst of all, he counselled himself that he was
not seizing anything ruthlessly. He was merely accepting that which was
thrust temptingly before him by fate.

Hypnotic spells of this character like contagion and fever have their
period of duration, their beginning, climax and end. It is written that
love is deathless, but this was not written of the body nor does it
concern the fevers of desire. The marriage of true minds to which
Shakespeare would admit no impediment is of a different texture and has
little sex in it. The friendship of Damon and Pythias was a marriage in
the best sense, though it concerned two men. The possibilities of
intellectual union between a man and a woman are quite the same. This is
deathless in so far as it reflects the spiritual ideals of the
universe--not more so. All else is illusion of short duration and
vanishes in thin air.

When the time came for Eugene to leave Alexandria as he had originally
wanted to do, he was not at all anxious to depart; rather it was an
occasion of great suffering for him. He could not see any solution to
the problem which confronted him in connection with Frieda's love for
him. As a matter of fact, when he thought about it at all he was quite
sure that she did not understand or appreciate the nature of her
affection for him or his for her. It had no basis in responsibility. It
was one of those things born of thin air--sunlight, bright waters, the
reflection of a bright room--things which are intangible and
insubstantial. Eugene was not one who, if he thought anything at all
about it, would persuade a girl to immorality for the mere sake of
indulgence. His feelings were invariably compounded of finer things,
love of companionship, love of beauty, a variable sense of the
consequences which must ensue, not so much to him as to her, though he
took himself into consideration. If she were not already experienced and
he had no method of protecting her, if he could not take her as his wife
or give her the advantages of his presence and financial support,
sec