hich to
the lonely is very dear, I have thought of marriage, but I remembered
and I refused to do violence to myself remembering. Long ago my standard
was established. I learned how deeply I could feel, and I refuse to
acknowledge myself bankrupt, I refuse to approach an honourable human
being with less than my all. Until my soul flower out again, until suns
flame about my head as in that dear yoretime, I shall keep teeming with
dreams and make no affront. I who have seen love, dare not live without
love.

I would not give in to fate, Herbert. I would assert my manhood. I would
abide in the strength of the first output, going with the flush of the
first glow into the gloom. I would spurn the calm of compromise and
mediocrity and register a high claim. I would keep the peace with
Romance and fly her colours to the last. You have lived? It is well, and
it might have been better, but do not give over and talk of
stirpiculture. You are not wiser than the laws which made you.

DANE.

XXX

FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON

THE RIDGE,
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
September 18, 19--.

How abominable I must seem to you, Dane! For certainly a creature is
abominable that lays rough hands on one's dearest possessions. I doubt
if even you realise how deeply you are stirred by my conduct towards
love. My marriage with Hester, considering the quality and degree of the
contracting parties, must appear as terrible to you as the sodomies that
caused God's ancient wrath to destroy cities. You see, I take your side
for the time, see with your eyes, live your thoughts, suffer what you
suffer; and then I become myself again and steel myself to continue in
what I think is the right.

After all, mine is the harder part. There are easier tasks than those of
the illusion-shatterer. That which is established is hard to overthrow.
It has the nine points of possession, and woe to him who attempts its
disestablishment; for it will persist till it be drowned and washed away
in the blood of the reformers and radicals.

Love is a convention. Men and women are attached to it as they are
attached to material things, as a king is attached to his crown or an
old family to its ancestral home. We have all been led to believe that
love is splendid and wonderful, and the greatest thing in the world, and
it pains us to part with it. Faith, we will not part with it. The man
who would bid us put it by is a knave and a fool, a vile, degraded
wretch,