"More monstrous still, these disciples of the New Race movement are militant! Their audacity is unbelievable! Certain ones among them, adepts in woodcraft, have now begun to range this forest with nets. What do you think of that! And when they encounter a young fellow who agrees with the remorseless standard of perfection set up by the University, they stalk him and net him! They've got four so far. And now it's Amourette's turn to go out!" Langdon's teeth chattered. "W-w-what are they g-going to do with their captures?" "Marry them!" "Willett? And Carrick and----" "Yes. Isn't it awful, Curt?" "Was she the girl with the net in the photo? I mean, was that her hand?" "No; that was a friend of her's who bagged Willett. Amourette started out yesterday for the first time after--well, I suppose you'd call it 'big game.' She saw me, stalked me, got near enough to see my glasses, and let me go. And to-day, thinking that she might have been mistaken and that perhaps I only wore sun-glasses, she came back. But I was ass enough to take off my cap to her, and she saw my hair--saw where it wasn't--and that settled it." "What a mortifying thing to happen to you, William." "I should think so. There's nothing unusual the matter with me. Caesar was bald. It's idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than the next man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could win her if I had half a chance." "Of course you could. If she's any good as a sport, she'd rather have you, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor's dummy." Sayre said: "Isn't it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet, lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pledged to p-p-propagate p-p-perfection?" "What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be," observed Langdon in disgust; "and the other three--Ugh!" "Why?" "To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo'd and wed that way--endure the degradation of a captivity among all those young girls----" Sayre said: "Would _you_ call for help if kidnapped?" Langdon gazed into space: "I wonder," he murmured. Sayre looked at him searchingly. "I don't believe you'd make the welkin ring with your yelps. It's probably the same with those four men." "Probably." "I don't suppose those suffragettes of the New Race University really require any fence there to keep those men in." "No; only to keep the rest of us out." "The chances are that Willett and that poet Carrick and De Lancy Smith and Alphonso W. Green couldn't be chased out of that University." "Those _are_ the chances. How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl. . . . William?" "What?"