"I mean more."

"I--I think you had better not say--more."

"Why?"

"Because of what I told you. There is no use in your--your finding me--interesting."

"Are you married?" he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and denied it with haste.

His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds. Harps were playing somewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines.

"Amourette," he repeated in a sort of divine daze.

"I am--going," she said, in a low voice.

"Do you desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him, beseechingly.

"Everything is wrong," she said in the ghost of a voice. "Things are hurrying me--trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now."

And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she opened them.

"Why did you come?" she asked almost fiercely. "There was no use in it! Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By this time the a.s.sociated Press, the police, and the families of the men you are looking for have received letters from every one of the four missing young men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect to return--after their honeymoons."

Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astounded young man who stared at her wildly through his eye-gla.s.ses.

After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe that these four young men had each eloped with their soul mates.

She bit her lip. "To be accurate," she said in a low voice, "somebody eloped with each one of them."

"How? I don't understand!"

"I don't wish you to... . Good-bye."

"You mean," he demanded, incredulously, "that four girls ran away with these four big, hulking young men?"

"Practically."

"That's ridiculous! Besides, it's impossible! Besides--women don't run men off like cattle rustlers. Man is the active agent in elopements, woman the pa.s.sive agent."

She did not answer.

"Isn't she?"

She made no reply.

He said: "Amourette, shall I ill.u.s.trate what I mean--with you as the pa.s.sive agent?"

The girl bent over a little, then with a sudden movement she dropped her head in her hands. A moment later he saw a single tear fall between her fingers.

He looked east, west, north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeing n.o.body, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; a graver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around her supple waist.

"Something is dreadfully wrong," he said; "all this must be explained--our strange encounter, our speaking, our talking at cross purposes, our candid interest in each other--the sudden, swift, unfeigned friendship that was born the instant that our eyes encountered----"

"I know it. It was born. Oh, I know it. I know it, and I could not help it--somehow--somehow----"

"It--it was almost like--like--love at first sight," he whispered.

"It was--something like it--I am afraid----"

"Do you think it was love?"

"I don't know... . Do you?"

"I don't know... . You mustn't cry. Put your head down--here. You mustn't be distressed."

"I am, dreadfully."

"You mustn't be."

"I can't help it--now."

"Could you help it if you--loved me?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no! It would distress me beyond measure to--to love you. Oh, it must not be--it must not happen to me----"

"It is already happening to me."

"Don't let it! Don't let it happen to either of us! Please--please----"

"But--it is happening all the while, Amourette."

She drew a swift, startled sigh.

"Is that what it is that is happening to me, too, Mr. Sayre?"

"Yes. I think so."

"Oh, oh, oh!" she sobbed, hiding her face closer to his shoulder.

"Amourette! Darling! Dea----"

"L-listen. Because now I've got to tell you all about the disappearance of those perfectly horrid young specimens of physical perfection. And after that you will abhor me!"

"Abhor you! Dearest--dearest and most divine of women!"

"Wait!" she sobbed. "I've got myself and you into the most awful sc.r.a.pe you ever dreamed of by falling in love with you at first sight!"

And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperate little hand into his.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IV.

ABOUT two o'clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scanty hair on end.

Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazed at him in consternation.

"What is it? Bears, William?" he asked fearfully. "D-d-don't be f-f-frightened; I'll stand by you."

"It isn't bears, you simp! I've just unearthed the most colossal conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods that are incredible, abominable, horrible----"

"What is happening?" faltered Langdon, turning paler. "Murder?"

"Worse! They've got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me----"

"Hey?"

"Willett and Carrick and the others!" shouted Sayre, gesticulating. "They've caught 'em all! She said so! I----"

"They? She? Who's caught what? Who's 'they'? What it is? Who's 'she'? What are you talking about, anyway?"

"Amourette told me----"

"Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?"

"I don't know. Shut up! My head's spinning like a gyroscope. All I know is that I want to marry her and she won't let me--and I believe she would if I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn't near-sighted--but she ran away and got inside the fence and locked the gate."

"Are you drunk?" demanded Langdon, "or merely frolicsome?"

"I don't know. I guess I am. I'm about everything else. What do I know about anything anyway? Nothing!"

He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptoms in demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm.

"I tell you it's an outrageous social condition which tolerates such doings!" shouted Sayre. "It's a perfectly monstrous state of things! Nine handsome men out of ten are fatheads! I told her so! I tried to point out to her--but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't listen!"

Langdon stared at him, jaw agape. Then: "Quit that ghost-dancing and talk sense," he ventured.

"Do you think that men are going to stand for it?" yelled Sayre, waving his hands, "ordinary, decent, G.o.d-fearing, everyday young men like you and me? If this cataclysmic cult gains ground among American women--if these exasperating suffragettes really intend to carry out any such programme, everybody on earth will resemble everybody else--like those wax figures marked 'neat,' 'imported,' and 'n.o.bby'! And I told Amourette that, too; but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't lis--My G.o.d! Why am I bald?"

He swung his arms like a pair of flails and advanced distractedly upon Langdon, who immediately retreated.

"Come back here," he said. "I want to picture to you the horrors that are going on in your native land! You ought to know. You've got to know!"

"Certainly, old man," quavered Langdon, keeping a tree between them. "But don't come any closer or I'll scream."

"Do you think I'm nutty?"

"Oh, not at all--not at all," said Langdon soothingly. "Probably the wafers disagreed with you."

"Curtis, wouldn't it rock any man's equilibrium to fall head over heels in love with a girl inside of ten minutes? I merely ask you, man to man."

"It sure would, dear friend----"

"And then to see that divine girl almost ready to love you in return--see it perfectly, plainly? And have her tell you that she could learn to care for you if your hair wasn't so thin and you didn't wear eye-gla.s.ses? By Jinks! That was too much! I'll leave it to you--wasn't it?"

Langdon swallowed hard and watched his friend fixedly.

"And then," continued Sayre, grinding his teeth, "then she told me about Willett!"

"Hey?"

"Oh, the whole thing is knocked in the head from a newspaper standpoint. They've all written home. They're married--or on the point of it----"

"What!"

"But that isn't what bothers me. What do I care about this job, or any other job, since I've seen the only girl on earth that I could ever stay home nights for! And to think that she ran away from me and I'm never to see her again because I'm near-sighted and partly bald!"

He waved his arms distractedly.

"But, by the G.o.ds and demons!" he cried, "I'm not going to stand for her going hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup in it I'll go insane!"

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 s.e.x 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-G.o.d-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."