It may be too late,but you must answer.""I believe in taking life in my own hands,"I said.
"It ought to be life,"said Nancy."It--it might have been life....It is only when a moment,a moment like this comes that the quality of what we have lived seems so tarnished,that the atmosphere which we ourselves have helped to make is so sordid.When I think of the intrigues,and divorces,the self-indulgences,--when I think of my own marriage--"her voice caught."How are we going to better it,Hugh,this way?Am I to get that part of you I love,and are you to get what you crave in me?
Can we just seize happiness?Will it not elude us just as much as though we believed firmly in the ten commandments?""No,"I declared obstinately.
She shook her head.
"What I'm afraid of is that the world isn't made that way--for you--for me.We're permitted to seize those other things because they're just baubles,we've both found out how worthless they are.And the worst of it is they've made me a coward,Hugh.It isn't that I couldn't do without them,I've come to depend on them in another way.It's because they give me a certain protection,--do you see?they've come to stand in the place of the real convictions we've lost.And--well,we've taken the baubles,can we reach out our hands and take--this?Won't we be punished for it,frightfully punished?""I don't care if we are,"I said,and surprised myself.
"But I care.It's weak,it's cowardly,but it's so.And yet I want to face the situation--I'm trying to get you to face it,to realize how terrible it is.""I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I'll take care of you--"I seized her arms,I drew her down to me.
"Don't!"she cried."Oh,don't!"and struggled to her feet and stood before me panting."You must go away now--please,Hugh.I can't bear any more--I want to think."I released her.She sank into the chair and hid her face in her hands....
As may be imagined,the incident I have just related threw my life into a tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and romanticist than myself,yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what the old moralists called the devious paths of sin.In my passion I had not hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and the strong took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a consistent disciple in the professional and business realm.A logical buccaneer,superman,"master of life"would promptly have extended this doctrine to the realm of sex.Nancy was the mate for me,and Nancy and I,our development,was all that mattered,especially my development.Let every man and woman look out for his or her development,and in the end the majority of people would be happy.This was going Adam Smith one better.
When it came to putting that theory into practice,however,one needed convictions:Nancy had been right when she had implied that convictions were precisely what we lacked;what our world in general lacked.We had desires,yes convictions,no.What we wanted we got not by defying the world,but by conforming to it:we were ready to defy only when our desires overcame the resistance of our synapses,and even then not until we should have exhausted every legal and conventional means.
A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great passion has made him a superman is in rather a predicament,especially if he be one who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not by challenging laws and conventions,but by getting around them.My wife and family loved me;and paradoxically I still had affection for them,or thought I had.But the superman creed is,"be yourself,realize yourself,no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so."One trouble with me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still clung to me.I would be cruel if I had to,but I hoped I shouldn't have to:something would turn up,something in the nature of an intervening miracle that would make it easy for me.Perhaps Maude would take the initiative and relieve me....Nancy had appealed for a justifying doctrine,and it was just what I didn't have and couldn't evolve.In the meanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to a situation that might well be called anomalous.
This "accommodation"was not unaccompanied by fever.My longing to realize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of "nerves";for our relationship had merely gone one step farther,we had reached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other,and paradoxically halted there;Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctions with a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me.And yet,when I look back upon it all,I can see that some of the difficulty lay with me:if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had mine--and kept it to myself.It was part of my romantic nature not to want to break her down.Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman herself,though that scarcely seems possible.
