Oh! he demanded so little. And all the plenty that was forced on him contained not that little. Everywhere, about him, above him, that little was. Yet, he could not reach it. He did not know how; he did not dare, even if he had known! For it seemed to him that all the world of men was a conspiracy against his having this mite he needed, this mite that had once been strewn through all the world and that now, only the despised were left to revel in. And he did not dare. For, vague as his knowledge was, he saw that the arch-conspirators against his having it were those he loved. To gain his little would be to wound these loved ones. With the thought, his heart broke in two. So Quincy merely sat there. And finally, he allowed his mussed head with its flood of delicate black hair to fall on his mother’s faultless linen, where her old hand could stroke it. And in this posture of strain and of devotion, the woman that gripped his soul as once her womb had gripped his body, gave forth the poison-nourishment that he drank in. When was he to be born of her, again? “Quincy, my boy,” she said, “there are so many ways for you to change, that it gives your mother a big pain to think of them. You must be thankful for these pains, my dear. A mother’s suffering should be a treasure and a reminder of duty, that you should never forget.” And the old, weary canons of a herd-race, hedging in its deformities and greed against the flaming grandeur of a nature it has denied, were vented to make this child conform, in whom a tinge of the old gaieties and loves still dared to linger. A mother’s advice! How stubborn is the strength of man, that through these generations man’s tender sprouts should have outlived a mother’s advice! By the old laws, she bears her child--the old laws of nature and of joy, of fertility and courage and abandon. And by the new laws, she rears him--the laws of compromise and pain, of soul-oppression and cowardice and cover. And by the fair love of the first law, she presses her advantage for the law of the herd that claims her creature as a slave. A queen, conceiving in her regal bed, enslaved and giving birth to a slave-child. Here is the cycle of most women. Quincy held his head low as his mother admonished and advised him. It was all still dim and uncertain in his mind, why these things seemed wrong to him; why they revolted him; why the common wisdom and love of his mother should be despised. Quincy did not understand, as she went on, how apt it was that his head should be held low.