tual animal,
and be something more than a mere unconscious puppet of the reproductive
forces. So head mastered my heart, and I laid the grip of my will over
the passion and went my way.

And then came another man's wife, a proud-breasted woman, the perfect
mother, made pre-eminently to know the lip clasp of a child. You know
the kind, the type. "The mothers of men," I call them. And so long as
there are such women on this earth, that long may we keep faith in the
breed of men. The wanton was the Mate Woman, but this was the Mother
Woman, the last and highest and holiest in the hierarchy of life. In her
all criteria were satisfied, and I reasoned my need of her.

And by this I take it that I was passing out of my blind puppetdom. I
was becoming a conscious selective factor in the scheme of reproduction,
choosing a mate, not in the lust of my eyes, but in the desire of my
fatherhood. Oh, Dane, she was glorious, but she was another man's wife.
Had I been living unartificially, in a state of nature, I would
certainly have brained her husband (a really splendid fellow), and
dragged her off with me shameless under the sky. Or had her husband not
been a man, or had he been but half a man, I doubt not that I would have
wrested her from him. As it was, I yearned dumbly and observed the
conventions.

Nor are these experiences heart soils and smirches. They have educated
me, fitted me for that which is yet to be. And I have written of them to
show you that I am no closet naturalist, that I speak authoritatively
out of adequate understanding. Since the end of love, when all is said
and done, is progeny; and since the love of to-day is crude and
wasteful; as an inventor and artificer I take it upon myself to
substitute reasoned foresight and selection for the short-sighted and
blundering selection of Mother Nature. What would you? The old dame
would have made a mess of it had I let her have her way. She tried hard
to mate me with the wanton, for it was not her method to look into the
future to see if a better mother for my progeny awaited me.

And now comes Hester. I approach her, not with the milk-and-water
ardours of first youth, nor with the lusty love madness of young
manhood, but as an intellectual man, seeking for self and mate the ripe
and rounded manhood and womanhood which comes only through the having of
children--children which must be properly born and bred. In this way,
and in this way only, can we fully express our