“Look here!” he demanded, sliding along the bench toward McGregor and emphasising his points by slapping one hand down upon the other. “Ain't all children my children?” He paused, trying to gather his scattered thoughts into words. When McGregor started to speak he put his hand up as though to ward off a new thought or another question. “I'm not trying to dodge,” he said. “I'm trying to get thoughts that have been in my head day after day in shape to tell. I haven't tried to express them before. I know men and women cling to their children. It's the only thing they have left of the dream they had before they married. I felt that way. It held me for a long time. It would be holding me now only that the violins pulled so hard at me.” He threw up his hand impatiently. “You see I had to find an answer. I couldn't think of being a skunk--running away--and I couldn't stay. I wasn't intended to stay. Some men are intended to work and take care of children and serve women perhaps but others have to keep trying for a vague something all their lives--like me trying for a tone on a violin. If they don't get it it doesn't matter, they have to keep trying. “My wife used to say I'd get tired of it. No woman ever really understands a man caring for anything except herself. I knocked that out of her.” The little man looked up at McGregor. “Do you think I'm a skunk?” he asked. McGregor looked at him gravely. “I don't know,” he said. “Go on and tell me about the children.” “I said they were the last things to cling to. They are. We used to have religion. But that's pretty well gone now--the old kind. Now men think about children, I mean a certain kind of men--the ones that have work they want to get on with. Children and work are the only things that kind care about. If they have a sentiment about women it's only about their own--the one they have in the house with them. They want to keep that one finer than they are themselves. So they work the other feeling out on the paid women. “Women fuss about men loving children. Much they care. It's only a plan for demanding adulation for themselves that they don't earn. Once, when I first came to the city, I took a place as servant in a wealthy family. I wanted to stay under cover until my beard grew. Women used to come there to receptions and to meetings in the afternoon to talk about reforms they were interested in----Bah! They work and scheme trying to get at men. They are at it all their lives, flattering, diverting us, giving us false ideas, pretending to be weak and uncertain when they are strong and determined. They have no mercy. They wage war on us trying to make us slaves. They want to take us captive home to their houses as Caesar took captives home to Rome.