life, to take it as it comes, to rejoice in its infinite unfoldment,
the 'plastic dance of circumstance'; to behold the budding flower
and the new-born suns as equal expressions of the joy of becoming.
But people are weak, they love themselves, and they set themselves
up as the centre of existence!"

But Corydon was personal, and loved life; and she stood out that
death was unthinkable--that she had the sense of infinity within
her. Thyrsis strove to make her see that one was to wreak one's
hunger for infinity at each moment, and not put it off to any future
age; that life was a thing for itself, and needed no sequel to
justify it. "It is a free gift, and we have no claim upon it; we
must take it on the terms of the giver."

From that they came to religion. Thyrsis loved the forms of the old
faiths, because of the poetry there was in them; and so he wrestled
with Corydon's paganism. He tried to show her how one could read
"Paradise Lost" and the English prayer-book, precisely as one read
Virgil and Homer; to which Corydon answered that she had been to
Sunday-school.

"But you once believed in Santa Claus!" he retorted. "And does that
make you quarrel with him now? Every time you read a novel, don't
you pretend to believe in people who never existed?"

He went on to show her how much she lost of the sublime and
inspiring things of the past. He took the story of Jesus. It
mattered not in the least if it was fiction or fact--it was there,
as an achievement of the human spirit. He showed her the man of the
gospels--not the stained-glass god with royal robes and shining