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The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey
page 68 of 366 (18%)
challenge civilization--young prophets, perhaps, out of the
wilderness--seeing a new vision of God and man because of their
detachment from all that might have blinded them.

"I have a feeling that your Nancy might, if she knew this, dream
with me of a new race, rising to the level of the needs of a new
world. She might see herself as the mother of such a
race--sheltered in my hidden land, sailing the seas with me, held
close to my heart. I think I am a masterful man, but I should be
masterful only to keep her to her best. If she faltered I should
strengthen her. And I should make her happy. I know that I could
make her happy. And for me there will never be another.

"I am leaving it to you to decide whether you will show her this. I
want her to see it, because it seems to me that she has a right to
decide between the life that I can offer her and the life she must
live if she marries Anthony Peak. But it all involves a point of
honor which I feel that I am not unprejudiced enough to decide. So
to-morrow I shall go away. I shall sail far in the two months that
I shall give myself before I come back. And when I come, you will
let me know whether I am to turn once more to the trackless seas,
or stay to find my happiness."

This letter when I had first read it had stirred me profoundly, as I
think it must have stirred any man or woman who has yearned amid the
complexities of modern existence to find some land of dreams. Even to my
island, comparatively untouched by the problems of existence in crowded
centers, come the echoes of discord, of social unrest, of political
upheavals, of commercial greed. In this hidden land of Olaf's would be
life stripped of its sordidness, love free from the blight of cynicism
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