She was still alive, however; and so he took a deep breath, and went at his task. There was no question now of what he could bear to do, but of what he must do; she must be saved, and who could do it but himself? Who else could take her hands and whisper to her, and fill her with new courage and hope; who else could bid her to live—to live; could rouse the fainting spirit, and bid it rise up and set forth upon the agonizing journey?
So out of the very abyss they came together. But when at last the fight was won, when the doctors an-
nouneed that she was out of danger, Thyrsis was fairly reeling with exhaustion. When he left her in the afternoon, he would go to his hotel-room and lie down, utterly prostrated; he would lie awake the whole night through, wrestling with the demons of horror that he had brought with him from her bedside.
So he realized that he was on the verge of collapse, and that cost what it would, he must get away. Cory-don's mother was with her, and when she was strong enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied that she would be satisfied. There would be Mr. Harding also, she said; Mr. Harding wrote that he would come up to the city, and do what he could to help her in her dire distress.
§ 9. THERE came from the higher regions a pass upon a steamer to Florida; and so Thyrsis sailed away. With a determined effort he took all his cares, and locked them back in a far chamber of his mind. He would not think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for money when he came home; more important yet, he would clear the book out of his thoughts—he would not permit it to gnaw at him all day and all night.
And by these resolves he stood grimly. He walked the deck for hours every day; he watched the foaming green waters, and the gulls wheeling in the sky, and the sun setting over the sea, and the new moon showering its fire upon the waves. Gradually the air grew warm, and ice and snow became as an evil dream. A land of magic it seemed to which Thyrsis came—the beauty of it enfolded him like a clasp of love. He saw pine-forests, and swamps with alligators in them, and live oaks draped with trailing grey moss. The clumps of
palmettos fascinated him—he had seen pictures of such trees in the tropics, and would hardly have been astonished to see a herd of elephants in their shadows.
He found a beach, snow-white and hard, upon which he walked for uncounted miles. He gathered strange shells and crabs, and watched the turkey-buzzards on the shore, and the slow procession of the pelicans, sailing past above the tops of the breakers. He saw the black fins of the grampuses cutting the water, and thought that they were sharks. He stood for hours at a time up to his waist in the surf ? casting for sea-bass; he got few fish, but joy and excitement he got in abundance.
Then, back upon the hammocks—to walk upon the hard shell roads, and see orange and lemon-groves, and gardens filled with roses and magnolias, and orchards of mulberry and fig-trees. Truly this must have been the land which the poet had described—
"Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vile."
Thyrsis stayed in a humble boarding-house, but nearby was one of the famous winter-resorts of the Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A strange society they were—it seemed as if the scum of the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into this bit of back-water. Here were society women, jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers, fleeing from the strain of the "Street"; here were parasites of every species, who, having nothing to do at home —or perhaps not even having any home—had come
to this land of warmth to prolong their orgies. They raced over the roads and beaches in autos, and over the water in swift motor-boats; they dressed themselves half a dozen times a day, they fed themselves upon rich and costly foods, they gambled and gossiped and drank and wantoned their time away. As he watched them it was all that Thyrsis could do to keep himself from beginning another manifesto for the "Appeal to Reason". Oh, if only the toilers of the nation could be brought here, and shown what became of the wealth they produced !
As if to complete his study of winter-resort manners and morals, Thyrsis encountered a college acquaintance whose father had become enormously rich through a mining speculation, and was here with a party of friends in a private-train. So he was whirled off in one of half a dozen automobiles, and rode for a hundred miles or so to an inland lake, and sat down to an at "fresco luncheon of such delicacies as pate de fois gras and jellied grouse and champagne. Afterwards the young people wandered about and amused themselves, and the elders played "bridge", in the face of all the raptures of this wonderland of nature.
A strange and sombre figure Thyrsis must have seemed to these people, with his brooding air and his worn clothing; he rode home in an auto with half a dozen youths and maidens, and while they flashed by lakes and rivers that gleamed in the golden moon-light, and by orchards and gardens from which the mingled scents of millions of blossoms were wafted to them, these voung people jested together and laughed and sang.
And Thyrsis lay back and watched them and studied them. Their music was what is called "rag-time" — they had apparently found nothing better to do with
their lives than to learn hundreds of verses and melodies, of which the subject-matter was the whims and moods of the half-tamed African race—their vanities and their barbarous impulses, and above all their hot and lustful passions. Song after song they poured forth, the substance of which was summed up in one line that Thyrsis happened to carry away with him—
"Ah lubs you, mah honey, yes, Ah do!"
It seemed to him such a curious and striking commentary upon the stage which leisure-class culture had reached, in the course of its reversion to savagery.
§ 10. THYRSIS came home after three weeks, browned and refreshed, and ready to take up the struggle again. He came with the cup of his love and sympathy overflowing; eager to see Corydon, and to tell her his adventures, and to share with her his store of new hope.
He found her reclining on the piazza of the farmhouse. The April buds were bursting upon the trees, and the odor of spring was in the air; also, the flush of health was stealing back into Corydon's cheeks. How beautiful she looked, and how soft and gentle was her caress, and what wistfulness and tenderness were in the smile with which she greeted him!
There was the baby also, tumultuous and excited. Thyrsis took him upon his knee, and while he fondled him and played with him, he told Corydon about his trip. But in a short while it became evident to him that she had something on her mind; and finally she sent the baby away to play, and began, "There is something I have to tell you."
"Yes, dear?" he said.
"It is something very, very important."
"Yes?" he repeated.
"I—I don't know just how to begin," said Cory don. "I hope you are not going to be angry."
"I can't imagine myself being angry just now," he replied; and then, struck by a sense of familiarity in this introduction, he asked, with a smile, "You haven't been seeing Harry Stuart, have you?"
Corydon frowned at the words. "Don't speak of that!" she said, quickly. "I am not joking."
He saw that she was agitated, and so he fell silent.
"I hesitated a long time about telling you," she went on. "But you must know. I am sure it's right to tell