As far as the women were concerned, he did not get on much better. His hostess, a creature of rare accomplishment and charm, was not at all at ease in her brief and fragmentary conversations with him. By the others he was frankly bored. They belonged to the pure milk of the intellectual. Disdaining the feminine arts altogether, they had that rather distressing mental acuteness of which men of equal or superior caliber are apt to fight very shy. It occurred to Saul Hartz, as soon as luncheon was over, that his wisest course in the circumstances would be to return at once to town. Sorely was he tempted to this, but to begin with there was no Sunday train, and even if a motor could be obtained, the journey was considerably more than a hundred miles. It would be an affront, moreover, to the hostess, although perhaps the Colossus was the last man in the world with whom a consideration of that kind was likely to weigh. But when all was said, what really enabled Saul Hartz to face another day of Doe Hill was the situation itself. The feeling obsessed him that something was about to happen. And whatever the something might be, he was not the man to shirk it. The day wore on, however, and nothing occurred. Grim faces, hostile looks were on every hand, but they did not culminate in any overt act. And the hostess with her immense social experience was able to ease the tension a little. But the Colossus provided a rare test for her powers. He seldom opened his heart to a woman. And with bitter enemies on every side, he retired very much into his shell. Howbeit, even he could not resist the allure of Rose Carburton. She was so very much a woman of the world that in the course of the day, as the crown of many attempts, she made some impact upon a reserve that was indeed formidable. After tea, while she was showing him a rare collection of miniatures, it suddenly occurred to Saul Hartz that through the medium of this woman there might be a hope of getting a line as to the Society’s attitude towards himself. Some hint, also, might be forthcoming of the course it was likely to follow. Characteristically, he began by asking point blank if she were a member of it. She fenced adroitly, with infinite wit in the use of the foils, but he pressed her hard. He meant to have the truth; and the sense of its importance her dexterity confessed nerved him to tear it from her. Force of reasoning took it captive in the end, not that the penetration of a Solomon was called for in the process. “And what, pray, do you think you are going to achieve with your mumbo jumbo?” he asked, suddenly spinning the button off his foil. “It is wrong in ethics, it stands outside the law, it is an affront to religion, it is opposed to the deepest instincts of the human race.” Mrs. Carburton said cautiously that the rules of the Society did not permit its case to be argued. But its members sincerely believed that by fearless coöperative action they could do permanent good to the world.