That cuts to the bone. You have the most delicate thing in the world in
hand, a young kindred mind. You feel responsible for it, you know you
are responsible for it; and you lose touch with it. You can't get at it.
Nowadays we've lost the old tradition of fatherhood by divine right--and
we haven't got a new one. I've tried not to be a cramping ruler, a
director, a domestic tyrant to that lad--and in effect it's meant his
going his own way.... I don't dominate. I hoped to advise. But you see
he loves my respect and good opinion. Too much. When things go well I
know of them. When the world goes dark for him, then he keeps his
trouble from me. Just when I would so eagerly go into it with him....
There's something the matter now, something--it may be grave. I feel he
wants to tell me. And there it is!--it seems I am the last person to
whom he can humiliate himself by a confession of blundering, or
weakness.... Something I should just laugh at and say, 'That's in the
blood of all of us, dear Spit of myself. Let's see what's to be
done.'..."

He paused and then went on, finding in the unfamiliarity and
transitoriness of his visitor a freedom he might have failed to find in
a close friend.

"I am frightened at times at all I don't know about in that boy's mind.
I know nothing of his religiosities. He's my son and he must have
religiosities. I know nothing of his ideas or of his knowledge about sex
and all that side of life. I do not know of the things he finds
beautiful. I can guess at times; that's all; when he betrays himself....
You see, you don't know really what love is until you have children. One
doesn't love women. Indeed you don't! One gives and gets; it's a trade.
One may have tremendous excitements and expectations and overwhelming
desires. That's all very well in its way. But the love of children is an