The barber stopped on the street corner to fill and light his pipe. “Women can change everything when they want to,” he said, looking at McGregor and letting the match burn out in his fingers. “They can have motherhood pensions and room to work out their own problem in the world or anything else that they really want. They can stand up face to face with men. They don't want to. They want to enslave us with their faces and their bodies. They want to carry on the old, old weary fight.” He tapped McGregor on the arm. “If a few of us--wanting with all our might to get something done--beat them at their own game, don't we deserve the victory?” he asked. “But sometimes I think I would like a woman to live with, you know, just to sit and talk with me,” said McGregor. The barber laughed. Puffing at his pipe he walked down the street. “To be sure! To be sure!” he said. “I would. Any man would. I like to sit in the room for a spell in the evening talking to you but I would hate to give up violin making and be bound all my life to serve you and your purposes just the same.” In the hallway of their own house the barber spoke to McGregor as he looked down the hallway to where the door of the black eyed girl's room had just crept open. “You let women alone,” he said; “when you feel you can't stay away from them any longer you come and talk it over with me.” McGregor nodded and went along the hallway to his own room. In the darkness he stood by the window and looked down into the court. The feeling of hidden power, the ability to rise above the mess into which modern life had sunk that had come to him in the park, returned and he walked nervously about. When finally he sat down upon a chair and leaning forward put his head in his hands he felt like one who has started on a long journey through a strange and dangerous country and who has unexpectedly come upon a friend going the same way. CHAPTER IV The people of Chicago go home from their work at evening--drifting they go in droves, hurrying along. It is a startling thing to look closely at them. The people have bad mouths. Their mouths are slack and the jaws do not hang right. The mouths are like the shoes they wear. The shoes have become run down at the corners from too much pounding on the hard pavements and the mouths have become crooked from too much weariness of soul. Something is wrong with modern American life and we Americans do not want to look at it. We much prefer to call ourselves a great people and let it go at that.