Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us; opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing. "How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my amusement. "Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me." "That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly, that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should not own it in the existing conditions--conditions that have no place in the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from medievalism--and I am about to do away with this order of things, to prove myself a man." "You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me. Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling. "Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born, to incorporate it in action.-- And you 're wondering where you come in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly. I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box between us--and the first article of your creed." "Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it right in the first place." "Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories." With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what it indicated. "It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological views--but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due." "And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"