She rolled Zip over on his back and pulled his ears, her mind dwelling, with the ancient resentment of her sex, upon the unfairness of nature--for the father pays no price! "I wonder if that explains desertion? I wonder if men desert girls, after they've got them into trouble, simply because the child costs them nothing? But how the girls stick to the babies, poor things! _They_ hardly ever go off on their own bat. And yet" (thus the Voice was speaking!), "the child needs a father to take care of it, as much as a mother, so the man and the woman ought to keep together.... But _he's_ the one who goes off! It ought to be tit for tat! Women ought to do the deserting," she said, passionately; but a moment later came the cynical admission: "Men wouldn't mind being 'deserted.' They'd probably like it. They ought to be _made_ to be constant. When we get the vote, we'll make laws to stop their 'deserting'!" Then she wavered; as far as laws go, there were enough now. The fact was, men were naturally faithless! "I hate men," she said, between her set teeth. Arthur Weston was right, they were "hunters." They are constant--in pursuit. "We ought to keep them on the hot-foot, then they'd be more keen to stay with us!" In a flash came the rest of Weston's comment: "They won't bag the game, if it perches on their fists." Her face reddened violently. She had come, head on, against a biological fact, namely, that reluctance in the woman makes for permanence in the man. _Reluctance!_... Her mother's tiresome talk about "cheapness" was suddenly intelligible. How foolish the word had sounded! Yet, perhaps, under its foolishness lay a primitive fact: that the welfare of the child demands a permanent relation between the father and the mother. But in proportion as she is "cheap," he is temporary, and the relationship is jeopardized! She did not put it into words, but she realized, amazed, that woman, whether she knows it or not, acts upon this old race knowledge. For the child's sake, she tries, by every sort of lure, to hold man to permanence which she will herself acquire by the fierce welding of agony. The surest "lure" is based upon the fact that man pursues that which flees; but all the lures spring from Nature's purpose to safeguard the child by giving it the care of two instead of one. For the "child" is the most important thing in the world! Fred was thinking hard. Sometimes she put a stick on the fire, and once she got up and paced about the room. It came over her, with a rush of surprise, that all the talk of what girls must and mustn't do, "all the drivel about 'propriety'!" was based on this same Race instinct.