Birth, self-oblivion, was no longer the
end of his dream-like existence. Lee Randon wanted to find the
justification, preserve the integrity, of his personality, and not lose
it. Yes, if nature, as it seemed fully reasonable, had intended the
other, something incalculable had upset its plans; for what now stirred
Lee had nothing to do with breeding. Long-continued thought, instead of
making his questioning clearer, endlessly complicated it. There was
always a possibility, which he was willing to consider, that he was
lacking in sheer normality; and that, therefore, his doubts, no more
than neurasthenic, were without any value.
He was ready to face this, but unable, finally, to accept it, to
dismiss himself so cheaply. Whatever it was, troubling his imagination,
was too perceptible at the hearts of other men. It wasn't new,
singular, in him; nor had he borrowed it from any book or philosophy:
it had so happened that he had never read a paragraph, satisfactory to
him in the slightest, about the emotional sum of a man and a woman.
What he read he couldn't believe; it was a paste of moralistic lies;
either that or the writer had no greater power of explication than he.
But, while he might deny a fundamental irregularity, the majority of
men, secretly delivered to one thing, would preach virtuously at him
the other. He recalled how universal were the traces of dissatisfaction
he had noticed; an uneasiness of the masculine world that resembled a
harborful of ships which, lying long and placidly at anchor, began in a
rising wind to stir and pull at their hawser chains.
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