“Oh, it isn’t that, Bill, it isn’t that! I dreamed of a wife who’d be a mate and a pal, Bill; one who’d be in a woman all that mother and the rest of the women I’ve known were not—who could work with me and play with me and laugh with me and love with me—and—and—I’ve gone to work and tied myself for life to a poor girl who writes her name like a seven-year-old and doesn’t know whether Bacon was a poet or something you buy for twelve cents a pound at the butcher’s and comes from a hog. I dreamed of a home, Bill—fine and rare and restful and rich, where all my treasures were to be gathered, where lights were seductive and every hour a golden moment—what was that line I quoted to you once, Bill—about ‘art drawing-rooms softly shaded at midnight?’ And look what I’ve got! Six rooms cluttered with junk, one step removed from squalor in a mud hut! This is my life, Bill, and I’m only twenty-six! They say America may get drawn into the war. Maybe—maybe—that’s going to be my way out. Only somehow, going to war in that spirit and leaving a foul nest behind seems weakness, Bill, not a whole lot different than putting the muzzle of a shotgun into my mouth and pulling the trigger with my foot!” As I remained silent, he went on: “Bill, remember the day I told you something about life being a fog—in which I groped blindly? Who’s responsible for that fog? Am I responsible, Bill—because I can’t find any way out?” “No!” I cried wrathfully. “Your folks are responsible! Damn them bringing kids into the world and thinking they’ve done their whole duty by simply giving them food for their bodies and clothes for their backs! Damn the assumption that parents are under no obligation to supply as much protection and training for a child’s mind and spirit as the law demands shall be supplied to its body!” “I’m groping, Bill! Groping, groping groping! Will I ever find my way out? I wonder? It’s too late now to damn father and mother. Poor souls, I’m just beginning to see now they didn’t know any better. And the hopeless part of my predicament is that now I’m the father of a child in turn—although somehow I can’t feel like a father!—and if I don’t play out my hand, the day’s coming when my child is going to turn around and execrate me as cordially as I feel like execrating my own folks to-night!” “The trouble with you is, Nat—you’re too darned conscientious for your own good. You’ve got a great bump of moral responsibility and it fills the whole of the inside of you. What you lack is a good healthy selfishness that would make people—especially your own relatives—quit playing you for a sucker!”