ll the list of proven failure? But say she
loved him! And after all, what was love? Was it the ever-living germ of
desire to create new life, that life might live? Was it the gift shut in
the hand when life left the creating source, to be squandered or
hoarded, to be used for honor or dishonor, but always ignorantly, to
serve the power behind creation itself? Was this beautiful creature the
sport of her woman's blood, doing the will of the earth, and so most
innocently walking into the lure of his arms because they longed for
her? He wondered.

And his side of it, the man's side, what did it mean for him to know he
worshiped the divinity of her beauty, the sun of her good pleasure, the
might of her yieldingness? When he thought of her, the body of things
became mysteriously transmuted to what he had to call their soul,
because it wore no other name. There was the flame of passion and the
frost of awe. The mystical call of her spirit to his had become the most
natural of all created impulses. Yet, say that he, too, was in the grip
of that greatest force, and nature was tricking the woman out with all
the colors of the dawn, to blind him into stumbling along nature's ways.
Did nature want him to say, "This is Paradise," until she was ready to
let him know it was the unchanged earth? If it was all a gigantic
phenomenon of a teeming universe--well, it was good. It was to be
worshiped as the savage worships the sun: but not greatly. For clouds
hide the sun, and, in spite of it, men die. Better not spill too much
blood for a savage god that gives but savage recompense. And, thinking
so, he closed his eyes and lapsed into a dull recognition of the things
of earth.

How far his mind had rushed upon its track he did not know, but suddenly
it came to a stop and jolted him awake. It was as if he had come to a
great gulf, the darkness girdling the natural life, and across it were
the colors of the dawn. They breathed and wavered in sheer beauty. And
at that moment there began in him the fainting recognition of what love
might be if men would have it so. First, there was the lure, the voice
of the creature calling to its mate. Then there was the unveiling of the
soul, the recognition, the sight of the soul as God sees it, so that the
two creatures can only breathe, "How beautiful you are!" And that must
not continue, because the soul is a delicate though an indestructible
thing, and cannot walk naked through the assaults of time. I