He stood facing them in the middle of his hermitage. With curious eyes they examined its architecture. Exiled hands had built it of poles and clay and a reliable brand of roofing. In the largest room, where they sat, were chairs, a table, and a book-shelf hammered together from stray boards--furniture midway between that in a hut on a desert isle and that of a home made happy from the back pages of a woman's magazine. On the wall were various posters that defined the hermit's taste in art as inflammatory, bold, arresting. Through one door at the rear they caught a glimpse of a tiny kitchen; through another the white covering of a hall-room cot could be seen. "Well?" repeated Mr. Peters. "I suppose you're a delegation, so to speak?" "A cold unfeeling word," objected Mr. Magee. "We have come to plead"--began Miss Norton, turning her eyes at their full candle-power on the hermit's bearded face. "I beg pardon, miss," interrupted Mr. Peters, "but it ain't any use. I've thought it all out--in the night watches, as the poet says. I came up here to be alone. I can't be a hermit and a cook, too. I can't and be true to myself. No, you'll have to accept my resignation, to take effect at once." He sat down on an uncertain chair and regarded them sorrowfully. His long well-shaped fingers clutched the cord of the purple gown. "It isn't as though we were asking you to give up the hermit business for good," argued Magee. "It's just for a short time--maybe only for a few days. I should think you would welcome the diversion." Mr. Peters shook his head vigorously. The brown curls waved flippantly about his shoulders. "My instincts," he replied, "are away from the crowd. I explained that to you when we first met, Mr. Magee." "Any man," commented Mr. Max, "ought to be able to strangle his instincts for a good salary, payable in advance." "You come here," said the hermit with annoyance, "and you bring with you the sentiments of the outside world--the world I have foresworn. Don't do it. I ask you." "I don't get you," reflected Mr. Max. "No, pal, I don't quite grab this hermit game. It ain't human nature, I say. Way up here miles from the little brass rail and the sporting extra, and other things that make life worth living. It's beyond me." "I'm not asking your approval," replied the hermit. "All I ask is to be let alone." "Let me speak," said Miss Norton. "Mr. Peters and I have been friends, you might say, for three years. It was three years ago my awed eyes first fell upon him, selling his post-cards at the inn. He was to me then--the true romance--the man to whom the world means nothing without a certain woman at his side. That is what he has meant to all the girls who came to Baldpate. He isn't going to shatter my ideal of him--he isn't going to refuse a lady in distress. You will come for just a little while, won't you, Mr. Peters?" But Peters shook his head again.