The story
“Gilbert Rawlings, a wealthy businessman, does not realize that his wife has ceased to care for him. He is overcome when he finds her gone, leaving a note saying that she will never return. He pursues the elopers, but the chase is brief, for their automobile goes over the edge of a bluff and the wife and her lover are killed. Returning home, and seeing his baby boy sleeping, Rawlings is filled with a terrible hatred toward all womankind. That night he has a dream. It seems to him that he has taken his boy into the wilderness where he is bringing him up to be a savage and to hate women. A young girl, travelling with some tourists, strays into the forest, and Rawlings makes a drudge of her. His son, now almost a young man, in spite of his bringing up, resents his father’s cruelty to the girl. At last he helps her to escape. The father pursues the runaways, and in a hand to hand fight with his son is about to kill him—when he wakes from his dream. It comes over him then, that false as his own wife may have been, he has no right to prejudice his son against women, but should permit him to believe the truth—that most women are loyal—and help him to win a wife who will make him happy.”
Summary from Reel Life · 31 October 1914
