Langdon's eyes rolled and he breathed heavily.
"Old man," he ventured, kindly, "don't you think you'd better lie down and try to take a nice little nap "
Sayre instantly chased him around the tree and caught him.
"Curt," he said savagely, "get over the idea that there's anything the matter with me mentally except love and righteous indignation. I am in love; and it hurts. I'm indignant, because those people are treating my sex with an outrageous and high-handed effrontery that would bring the blush of impotent rage to any masculine cheek!"
"What people?" said the other warily. "You needn't answer till you get your wits back."
"They're back, Curt; that twelve-foot fence of heavy elephant-proof wire which we noticed in the forest day before yesterday isn't the fencing to a game park. It encloses a thousand acres belonging to the New Race University. Did you know that?"
"What's The New Race University?" asked Langdon, astonished.
"You won't believe it but, Curtis, it's a reservation for the the p-p-propagation of a new and s-s-symmetrically p-p-proportioned race of g-g-god-like human beings! It's a deliberate attempt at cold-blooded scientific selection an insult to every bald-headed, near-sighted, thin-shanked young man in the United States!"
"William," said the other, coaxingly, "you had better lie down and let me make some wafer soup for you."
"You listen to me. I'm getting calmer now. I want to tell you about these New Race women and their University and Amourette and Reginald Willett and the whole devilish business."
"Is there is there really such a thing, William? You would not tell me a bind like that just to make a goat of me, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't. There is such a thing."
"Did you see it?"
"No, I "
"How do you know?"
"Amourette told me shamelessly, defiantly, adorably! It was organised in secret out of the most advanced and determined as well as the most healthy, vigorous, and physically beautiful of all the suffragettes in North America. One of their number happened to own a thousand acres here before the State took the rest for its park. And here they have come, dozens and dozens of them to attend the first summer session of the New Race University."
"Is is there actually a University in these woods?"
"There is."
"Buildings?" demanded Langdon, amazed.
"No, burrows. Isn't that the limit? Curt, believe me, they live in caves. It's their idea of being vigorous and simple and primitive. Their cult is the cave woman. They have classes; they study and recite and exercise and cook and play auction bridge. Their object is to hasten not only political enfranchisement, but the era of a physical and intellectual equality which will permit them to mate as they choose and people this republic with perfect progeny. Every girl there is pledged to mate only with the very pick of physical masculine perfection. Their pledge is to build up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate, crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has become degenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect is permitted inside that wire fence. My eye-glasses bar me out; your shanks exclude you also your politics, because you're a democrat."
"That's monstrous!" exclaimed Langdon, indignantly.
"More monstrous still, these disciples of the New Race movement are militant! Their audacity is unbelievable! Certain ones among them, adepts in woodcraft, have now begun to range this forest with nets. What do you think of that! And when they encounter a young fellow who agrees with the remorseless standard of perfection set up by the University, they stalk him and net him! They've got four so far. And now it's Amourette's turn to go out!"
Langdon's teeth chattered.
"W-w-what are they g-going to do with their captures?"
"Marry them!"
"Willett? And Carrick and "
"Yes. Isn't it awful, Curt?"
"Was she the girl with the net in the photo? I mean, was that her hand?"
"No; that was a friend of her's who bagged Willett. Amourette started out yesterday for the first time after well, I suppose you'd call it 'big game.' She saw me, stalked me, got near enough to see my glasses, and let me go. And to-day, thinking that she might have been mistaken and that perhaps I only wore sun-glasses, she came back. But I was ass enough to take off my cap to her, and she saw my hair saw where it wasn't and that settled it."
"What a mortifying thing to happen to you, William."
"I should think so. There's nothing unusual the matter with me. Cæsar was bald. It's idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than the next man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could win her if I had half a chance."
"Of course you could. If she's any good as a sport, she'd rather have you, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor's dummy."
Sayre said: "Isn't it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet, lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pledged to p-p-propagate p-p-perfection?"
"What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be," observed Langdon in disgust; "and the other three Ugh!"
"Why?"
"To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo'd and wed that way endure the degradation of a captivity among all those young girls "
Sayre said: "Would you call for help if kidnapped?"
Langdon gazed into space: "I wonder," he murmured.
Sayre looked at him searchingly.
"I don't believe you'd make the welkin ring with your yelps. It's probably the same with those four men."
"Probably."
"I don't suppose those suffragettes of the New Race University really require any fence there to keep those men in."
"No; only to keep the rest of us out."
"The chances are that Willett and that poet Carrick and De Lancy Smith and Alphonso W. Green couldn't be chased out of that University."
"Those are the chances. How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl William?"
"What?"
"Think of the concentrated beauty in that University! Think of that rich round-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And we can't have any because you are slightly bald and near-sighted and I am thin and scholarly!" He ran at the camp-kettle and kicked it.
After a painful silence Sayre said timidly: "Don't laugh, but is there any known substance which will bring in hair?"
"You mean bring it out?"
"Well, dammit, grow it! Is there?"
"There are too many bald monarchs and millionaires to prove the contrary. Nor is there anything that can make my thin shanks fatter."
" I'd be willing to go about without glasses," said Sayre humbly. "I told her so."
"Couldn't you deceive her with a wig? It wouldn't matter afterward. After you're once married let her shriek."
"Amourette saw my head." And he hung it in bitter dejection.
"Come on," said Langdon cheerily. "Let's peek through their fence and see what happens. Much has been done with a merry eye in this world of haughty ladies."
As they turned away into the woods Sayre clenched his fists.
"I'd like to knock the collective blocks off those four young men inside that fence. And to think to think of Amourette going out again to-morrow, man hunting, with her net! I can't endure it, Curt I simply can't."
Langdon looked at his friend in deep commiseration.