storm. To Thyrsis they assumed heroic proportions, they towered like
queens of tragedy; in after-history this was known as the Meeting of
the Mothers, and he likened it to the great contest in the
Nibelungenlied between Brunhild and Kriemhild.

Then, on top of it all, there came another calamity. In the
boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly ladies, who had a
remarkable faculty for divining the evil deeds of other people. They
had divined the evil deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them
was moved to come to Corydon's mother one day, and warn her lest
others should divine them too. And so there was more agony; the
discovery was made that Corydon had become a social outcast to all
the maids and matrons of the summer population--a girl who went to
visit a poet in his lonely cabin, and stayed until unknown hours of
the night. And so there came to Thyrsis a note saying that Corydon
must come no more to the cabin; and later in the day came Corydon
herself, to bring the tidings that a telegram had come from the
city, and that she and her mother were to leave the place the next
day.

Thyrsis was aflame with anger, and was for going to the nearest
parson and having the matter settled there and then. But Corydon
dissuaded him from this.

"I've been thinking it over," she said, "and it's best that I should
go. You must finish the book--everything depends upon that, and you
know that if I came here now you couldn't do it. But if I go away,
there'll be nothing to disturb you. I can study meantime; and when
we meet in the city in the fall, everything will be clear before
us."