'The best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,'
Hampson resumed. 'By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
animal in us. Then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond
humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of
life. In us her force becomes evident.

'She can't live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting
women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can
gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and
to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that
is, us altogether.'

'You're a bit downright are you not?' asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements
were arbitrary.

'That's according to my intensity,' laughed Hampson. 'I can open the
blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
see--God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!'

'Don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked Siegmund.

'Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and