Section 4. They came back after a time, to the subject of love; and
to the ideal of it which Thyrsis meant to set forth in the book. It
was the duty of every soul to seek the highest potentiality of which
it had vision; and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the
person he loved. There could be no higher love than this--to treat
the thing beloved as one's self, to be perpetually dissatisfied with
it, to scourge it to new endeavor, to hold it in immortal
discontent.

This was a point about which they argued with eager excitement. To
Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be held before the loved one;
whereas Corydon argued that love must exist before such a union
could be thought of. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone as she
maintained the thesis that the princess could not go with the
minstrel unless his love was given to her irrevocably.

"If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pursuit of an ideal,
then I agree with you," said Thyrsis. "But if you mean what love
generally means--a mutual admiration, the worshipping of another
personality--then I don't."

"And are lovers not even to be interesting to each other?" cried
Corydon.

But the poet did not shrink even from that. "I don't think a woman
could be interesting to me--except in so far as she was growing. And
she must always know that if she stopped growing, she would cease to
be interesting. That is not a matter of anybody's will, it seems to
me--it is a fact of soul-chemistry."