This was disconcerting news indeed. There were some who blamed Persilope, who had poured out a portion of the drink. Others blamed the women for not staying by her. Trastevera blamed herself, and was tormented afresh, seeing as a departure from good usage of which she herself was source and center. Mancha and Herman found it another reason for pushing their idea, which the Hammerer by this time openly avowed. As if his admission of his passion had in a measure defined him to himself, he had shaken off the outward evidence of it, and was occupied chiefly in bringing his purpose to completion. He had not spoken to Zirriloë since his talk with Trastevera, sat no more mooning in the woods, but went about everywhere among the young men with Herman at his shoulder, making adherents. “But what is your objection to it?” Herman had asked of me, sitting under the drawn flaps of Evarra’s hut, upon which the rain drummed hollowly. I had a great many objections, based upon my conviction that no amount of Treasure would buy immunity for the Outliers once they were made known to men. But all my reasons would have lacked their proper cogency with Herman, who was like the Outliers in being too honorable to predict dishonor on the part of others. I knew too little of business to forecast the hindrances likely to fall in the way. All I was sure of was that it was a mistake, first and last it was bound to be a mistake, and very little progress of the affair would prove it. “If you think so well of their way of life,” said I, “why do you wish to change it? They wouldn’t be happy in our way; it wouldn’t agree with them.” “If you’re thinking about happiness, how about Daria? And Zirriloë; do you call it happiness to be cut off from all that belongs to youth and loveliness? Why, the girl was made for loving.” “But I thought that was something you didn’t believe in.” He had the grace to blush here and to be disconcerted, but he protested: “They believe in it—and I—sometimes I think I am only learning what it is to be alive. All alive, not just the intellect of me, like mistletoe at the top of a tree. And it’s good”—he scuffed with his feet strongly on the ground as though he liked the sting of it—“so good that I want to make it sure.” Before I could ask him what that had to do with making a sociological experiment of the Outliers, he had turned the argument again. “Besides, Mona,” with almost an injured air, “I’m thinking of you. We know too much ever to be allowed to leave here in possession of all our faculties. Unless we go in some such way as I suggest, as emissaries to arrange for the title to their lands——” “Yes,” I assented; “I hadn’t thought of that. We could go out that way, and then we needn’t say any more about it.” “Well,” he admitted doubtfully, “that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. That doesn’t seem quite—right, does it?”