for me. To breathe an ounce of spirit into their deflated souls. To set them free from bondage, honor them as human beings, make them my friends.
And while these thoughts (as of another life) were crowding my head, I could not help but compare that situation, so difficult as it then seemed, with the present one. Then my words had weight, my counsels were listened to; now nothing I said or did carried the least weight. I had become the fool incarnate. Whatever I attempted, whatever I proposed, fell to dust. Even were I to writhe on the floor protestingly, or foam at the mouth like an epileptic, it would be to no avail. I was but a dog baying at the moon.
Why had I not learned to surrender utterly, like Ricardo? Why had I failed to reach a state of complete humility? What was I holding out for in this lost battle?
As I sat watching this farce which the two of them were enacting for Ricardo’s benefit, I became more and more aware of the fact that he was not the least taken in. My own attitude I made clear each time I addressed him. It was hardly necessary, indeed, for I could sense that he knew I had no desire to deceive him. How little she suspected, Mona, that it was our mutual love for her which united us and which made this game ridiculously absurd.
The hero of love, I thought to myself, can never be deceived or betrayed by his bosom friend. What have they to fear, two brotherly spirits? It is the woman’s own fear, her own self-doubt, which alone can jeopardize such a relation. What the loved one fails to comprehend is that there can be no taint of treachery or disloyalty on the part of her lovers. She fails to realize that it is her own feminine urge to betray which unites her lovers so firmly, which holds their possessive egos in check, and permits them to share what they never would share were they not swayed by a passion greater than the passion of love. In the grip of such a passion the man knows only total surrender. As for the woman who is the object of such love, to uphold this love she must exercise nothing short of spiritual legerdemain. It is her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that it is inspired.
But if the object of this sublime adoration be not worthy! Seldom is it the man who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt. Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in evidence. With such creatures, particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty, though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and lineaments of the loved one.
6.
For days the after effects of Ricardo’s visit hung over me. To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family—the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.
Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event—if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!—I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday.
A most unexpected visit from Stanley, who had discovered our whereabouts by accident, only increased my distress, my inner uneasiness. True, he hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough, however, to leave a few lacerating barbs in my side.
It was almost as if he had come to corroborate
And while these thoughts (as of another life) were crowding my head, I could not help but compare that situation, so difficult as it then seemed, with the present one. Then my words had weight, my counsels were listened to; now nothing I said or did carried the least weight. I had become the fool incarnate. Whatever I attempted, whatever I proposed, fell to dust. Even were I to writhe on the floor protestingly, or foam at the mouth like an epileptic, it would be to no avail. I was but a dog baying at the moon.
Why had I not learned to surrender utterly, like Ricardo? Why had I failed to reach a state of complete humility? What was I holding out for in this lost battle?
As I sat watching this farce which the two of them were enacting for Ricardo’s benefit, I became more and more aware of the fact that he was not the least taken in. My own attitude I made clear each time I addressed him. It was hardly necessary, indeed, for I could sense that he knew I had no desire to deceive him. How little she suspected, Mona, that it was our mutual love for her which united us and which made this game ridiculously absurd.
The hero of love, I thought to myself, can never be deceived or betrayed by his bosom friend. What have they to fear, two brotherly spirits? It is the woman’s own fear, her own self-doubt, which alone can jeopardize such a relation. What the loved one fails to comprehend is that there can be no taint of treachery or disloyalty on the part of her lovers. She fails to realize that it is her own feminine urge to betray which unites her lovers so firmly, which holds their possessive egos in check, and permits them to share what they never would share were they not swayed by a passion greater than the passion of love. In the grip of such a passion the man knows only total surrender. As for the woman who is the object of such love, to uphold this love she must exercise nothing short of spiritual legerdemain. It is her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that it is inspired.
But if the object of this sublime adoration be not worthy! Seldom is it the man who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt. Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in evidence. With such creatures, particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty, though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and lineaments of the loved one.
6.
For days the after effects of Ricardo’s visit hung over me. To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family—the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.
Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event—if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!—I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday.
A most unexpected visit from Stanley, who had discovered our whereabouts by accident, only increased my distress, my inner uneasiness. True, he hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough, however, to leave a few lacerating barbs in my side.
It was almost as if he had come to corroborate
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