“You’d better not try too hard. If I were doing it, I’d remind myself that there is some natural goodness in the human heart; then I’d look for it in the boy, and encourage it. He’ll be fond of something, passionately interested in something, and the thing he cares for will be innocent enough, at least while he’s young. I’d simply encourage him. If he cares for nothing, he’s hopeless. In that case I’d try to bring him up so that he’d do the least possible harm to the human race. I’d tell him that he has no right to reform people unless he loves the same things that they do. That would keep him out of mischief. But your boy will be like you and Damastor—yes, like his father; Damastor was weak, but for a time he was a lover. You’ll want to protect the boy from the pressures that spoiled his father’s soul. Think what a man Damastor would have been if his mother had encouraged him to lose his heart to the first pretty girl he met—if she had urged him to fall in love with the very prettiest, to dream of her, to hunt the world over for her!”

“In that case, of course, I shouldn’t have had him, not even for a short time.”

“Yes, you would. She ought to have told him it was his duty as well as his right to love you always. That kind of education would have made a difference in Damastor … But I’ll tell you something, Adraste—two things. When you have brought up your boy by this ideal method I’m suggesting, he won’t turn out quite as you expect; he’ll find some way of his own, and surprise you. And then you’ll be a little false to your theories, and you’ll feel a temptation to behave like Charitas. You’ll say, ‘My dear boy, I didn’t bring you up to do so and so!’ When that day comes, remember what I’m telling you; you’ll understand that life is a comedy.”

“I can’t imagine him grown up—that pink and white innocence. Of course he’ll have a will of his own—I want him to have that.”