He recalled their bridal-night. All that had puzzled him in it and startled him--how clear it was now! Corydon had shrunk from him, just enough to lure him; and then, suddenly, her whole being had seemed to change--she had caught him, and held him fast. For he had accomplished her purpose; he had gotten her with child! And so he must stand by her--he must bring her food, that she might give the child life! And for that purpose she would hold him; for that she would use every art of which she was mistress--the whole force of her being would go into it!
She would not know this, of course; she would do it blindly and instinctively, as she had done everything so far. She would do it by those same generous and beautiful qualities that had made him hers! Therein lay the humor of his whole adventure--there lay the deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and aspiration; and they were wound about his very heart-strings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose. And he would never pull them loose--he saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy herself--and so he would save her! She would bid him cast her away--and so he would stand by her to the end! And the end would be simply the withering and shrivelling of those radiant qualities which he called his genius--qualities which were so precious to him, but about which Nature knew nothing!
So grim an aspect had life come to wear to this boy of twenty-one! He stripped all the flesh of illusion from its fair face, and saw the grinning skull beneath. And he mocked at himself, because of all those virtues by which he had been caught--and which yet he knew were stronger than his will. Through faith and love he had been made a captive; and through faith and love would he waste away and perish!
Section 5. Meantime, Corydon was prosecuting an inquiry into these matters upon her own account, and getting at quite other points of view. There were some, it seemed, who took this game less seriously than she and Thyrsis; and these managed to go free--they broke the cords of the Snare, they slipped between the fingers of the hand of Fate. Corydon had heard a certain scientist refer to man as “Nature’s insurgent son”; and now came the discovery that Nature had insurgent daughters also.