"You see, Tuck, old beggar, I'm getting old, and when I die there will be no little chap or little sister Shipman to carry on the soul of me, yes, even the foolishnesses of me; I suppose," Watts inquired of his dog, "I suppose you have lots of little puppies somewhere, some blue-ribboned and with kennel degrees that make you pretty proud? But me, Tuck, I don't leave anything, not even a little adopted puppy. Nothing can laugh and say, 'My father was an awful duffer, but he made good salad dressing,' or 'My father licked me once, but we used to go fishing together.' Tuck," whispered the man fiercely, "I want a son, a little young 'un to keep alive the things I dream and hope and believe. I want another me." The strong fingers in the dog's shaggy hair gripped upon the hateful idea of utter cessation of being, as many another has gripped. Let those who rage against Birth Control face rather this mystery of the man or woman who because of an ideal in the matter of human love dies without issue! Here is a Birth Control of much larger and more significant reach. "The strange part of it is, Tuck, it's easy enough to get children, but to get children who shall, no matter what befalls them, be parented by high human love and faith, that is another thing." The deep eyes stared into the shallow dog eyes. "Well," sighed Shipman, "it's very seldom that I care like this. It's the beginning of autumn, that's all. You don't suppose, Tuck, that I really care?" Yet the man knew remorselessly that in the past week things had happened about which he unutterably cared. The chance mingling with the young life of the Willow Roads had shown him to himself in a way that he could not ignore or brush aside. He was a human man, a soul and body undeveloped, unrealized, inorientate in the great human plan. He had blown, like life seed, down the dry roads of philosophy and introspection, and had lain for a while by the springs of youth and action until some hidden principle within him had germinated. Now he craved direction, fruition! There floated through the mind of the lawyer the pictures of Minga, with her vivid capricious demands on him, her unwitting tempting of him; what would another man have done? Of what worth were his hesitations and restraints, Sard, with her high compulsions and swift fires? Why should he, Shipman, have let these fresh wonders of womanhood flit by like shadows? He groaned, knowing why--because do what he would, think what he would, Eleanor Ledyard held him. The woman of ice, the enshrined mystery of woman whom another man had called "wife," but who, Shipman believed, had never been true soul-wife, controlled his, Shipman's, deepest, most inaccessible self.