ever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had ever
written. This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admiration
of the few. His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purely
artificial, and yet only a few had guessed it. He had built it up about him
as a sort of protection. He called himself "an adventurer in the mysteries
of feminism," and to be this successfully he had argued that he must
destroy in himself the usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.

How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know--until these last
moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed that she had
found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood.
It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He had trained himself
to look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at a beautiful flower,
confident that if he went beyond the mere admiration of it he would find
only burned-out ashes. But in her he had seen something that was more than
beauty, something that for a flashing moment had set stirring every
molecule in his being. He had felt the desire to rest his hand upon her
shining hair!

He turned off into a winding path that led into the thick poplars,
restraining an inclination to look back in the direction of the Otto camp.
He pulled out the pipe he had dropped into his shirt pocket, filled it with
fresh tobacco, and began smoking. As he smoked, his lips wore a quizzical
smile, for he was honest enough to give Joanne Gray credit for her triumph.
She had awakened a new kind of interest in him--only a passing interest, to
be sure--but a new kind for all that. The fact amused him. In a large way
he was a humourist--few guessing it, and he fully appreciated the humour of
the present situation--that he, John Aldous, touted the world over as a
woman-hater, wanted to peer out through the poplar foliage and see that
wonderful gold-brown head shining in the sun once more!