Lights flashed out of the darkness of the park. The two men sat on the bench thinking each his own thoughts.
“I want to take some work out of the clamps to-night,” the barber said, looking at his watch. Together the two men walked along the street. “Look here,” said McGregor. “I didn't mean to hurt you. Those two women that came up and interfered with what we were working out made me furious.”
“Women always interfere,” said the barber. “They raise hell with men.” His mind ran out and began to play with the world-old problem of the sexes. “If a lot of women fall in the fight with us men and become our slaves—serving us as the paid women do—need they fuss about it? Let them be game and try to help work it out as men have been game and have worked and thought through ages of perplexity and defeat.”
The barber stopped on the street corner to fill and light his pipe. “Women can change everything when they want to,” he said, looking at McGregor and letting the match burn out in his fingers. “They can have motherhood pensions and room to work out their own problem in the world or anything else that they really want. They can stand up face to face with men. They don't want to. They want to enslave us with their faces and their bodies. They want to carry on the old, old weary fight.” He tapped McGregor on the arm. “If a few of us—wanting with all our might to get something done—beat them at their own game, don't we deserve the victory?” he asked.
“But sometimes I think I would like a woman to live with, you know, just to sit and talk with me,” said McGregor.
The barber laughed. Puffing at his pipe he walked down the street. “To be sure! To be sure!” he said. “I would. Any man would. I like to sit in the room for a spell in the evening talking to you but I would hate to give up violin making and be bound all my life to serve you and your purposes just the same.”
In the hallway of their own house the barber spoke to McGregor as he looked down the hallway to where the door of the black eyed girl's room had just crept open. “You let women alone,” he said; “when you feel you can't stay away from them any longer you come and talk it over with me.”
McGregor nodded and went along the hallway to his own room. In the darkness he stood by the window and looked down into the court. The feeling of hidden power, the ability to rise above the mess into which modern life had sunk that had come to him in the park, returned and he walked nervously about. When finally he sat down upon a chair and leaning forward put his head in his hands he felt like one who has started on a long journey through a strange and dangerous country and who has unexpectedly come upon a friend going the same way.