2o6 



The Review of Reviews. 



August I, 1906 



to be the mere butt of my egotistical self-projection, 

 the custodian of ray sexual pride, and drew together 

 and became over and above this a [ ersonality of her 

 own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had 

 evaded only to meet again. 



I find a little difficulty in describing the quality 

 of the old-world love-making so that it may be un- 

 derstandable now. 



We young people had practically no preparation 

 at ail for the stir and emotions of adolescence. To- 

 ward the young the world maintained a conspiracy 

 of stimulating silences. There came no initiation. 

 There were books, stories of a curiously conventional 

 kind that insisted on certain qualities in every love- 

 affair and greatlv intensified ones natural desire for 

 them — perfect trust, perfect loyalty, lifelong devo- 

 tion. Much of the complex essentials of love was 

 altogether hidden. It was a dual system always in 

 the old theorj-'-a linking up that closed you both 

 from almost all other intercourse. One read these 

 things, got occasional glimpses of this and that, 

 wondered and forgot, and so one grew. Then strange 

 emotions, novel alarming desires, dreams strangely 

 charged with feeling, an inexplicable impulse of self- 

 abandonment toward fine and pleasant strangers, be- 

 gan to trickle queerly amongst the familiar and 

 purely egotistical and materialistic feelings of boy- 

 hood and girlhood. We were like misguided travel- 

 lers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical 

 river. Presently we were knee-deep and neck-deep 

 in the flood. Our beings were suddenly going out 

 from ourselves seeking the intimate b<eing of others 

 — we knew not why. This novel craving for aban- 

 donment to other personalities, and especially to 

 them of the other sex, bore us away. We were 

 ashamed, and full of desire. We kept the thing a 

 guilty secret, and were resolved to satisfy it against 

 all the world. In this state it was we drifted m the 

 most accidental way against some other blindly seek- 

 ing creature, and linked like nascent atoms. 



We were obsessed by the books we read, by all 

 the talk that drifted about us teaching us that once 

 we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. 

 Then afterward we discovered that other to whom 

 we were linked was also an egotism, an individual 

 thing of ideas and impulses. 



.So it was, I say, with the young of my class and 

 most of the young people in our world. So it came 



about that I sought Nettie on the Sunday afternoon, 

 and suddenly came upon her, light-bodied, slenderly 

 feminine, hazel-eyed, with her soft sweet young face 

 under the shady brim of her hat of straw, the pretty 

 Venus I had resolved should be wholly mine. 



There, all imaware of me still, she stood, my es- 

 sential feminine, the embodiment of the inner thing 

 in life for me — and moreover an unknown other, a 

 person like myself. 



She held a little book in her hand, open as if she 

 were walking along and reading it. That chanced 

 to be her pose, but indeed she was standing quite 

 still, looking away toward the grey and lichenous 

 shrubberv wall and, as I think now, listening. 

 III. 

 I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when 

 she heard the rustle of my approaching feet, her 

 surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me. I could 

 recollect, I believe, every significant word she spoke 

 during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. 

 At least, it seems I could, though indeed I may de- 

 ceive myself. But I will not make the attempt. We 

 were both too ill educated to speak our full mean- 

 ings, we stamped out our intentions with climisy, 

 stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught 

 would fail to catch our intention. The effect would 

 be inanity. But our first words I may give you, be- 

 cause, though they conveyed nothing to me at the 

 time, afterward they meant much. 

 " Yon. Willie '." she said. 



" I have come." I said — forgetting in the instant 

 all the elaborate things I had intended to say. " I 



thought I would surprise you " 



" Surprise me ?' 

 " Yes." 



She staxed at me for a moment. I can see her 

 pretty face now as it looked at me — her impenetrable 

 dear face. She laughed a queer little laugh, and 

 her colour went for a moment, and then, as soon as 

 she had spoken, came back again. 



"Surprise me at what?" she said, with a rising 

 note. 



I was too intent to explain myself, to think of 

 what might lie in that. 



" I wanted to tell you," I said, " that I didn't mean 

 quite — the things I put in my letter." 



( Tc be coniimied.) 



