"You seem more natural here," she said, glancing at his ruffled hair and careless tie. "I'd like to see you at work." He rose to get a copy of the editorial sheet for the day, and handed it to her. "You inspired that." She took the editorial, which was entitled "Waste," and ran down its heavily leaded phrases, smiling to herself at these moralizations of the devil turned friar. He saw her amusement, and took the editorial abruptly. "You won't understand--that's what I _believe_!" He drew a chair opposite and flung into it; then, with an erect stiffening of his body, clasped his hands eagerly between his knees, releasing them in sudden flights, returning them always to their tenacious grip. There was something in the combustibility of the gesture that was significant of the whole man. "By George!" he said suddenly, without relevancy, "why haven't I the right to stretch out my hand and take you?" Doré burst out laughing, immensely flattered. "What a nuisance you are!" he continued savagely. "What good do you do in the world? All you women do is to interfere! And to think that this sentimental civilization--idiotic civilization--is going to experiment for a few hundred years with pretending that women are made to share the progress of the world with men!" "So you're not a woman's--" "I'm absolutely against the whole feminine twaddle!" he broke in. "Man's the only thing that counts! We're suffocated with feminism already--over-sentimentalized; can't think but in the terms of an individual." He stopped, and glaring at her, said, with a furious gesture: "And now, here you are, an impudent little girl who doesn't do the world a bit of good, sitting back there and laughing contentedly because you've suddenly popped up to raise Cain with me!" The originality of his attack delighted her. It pleased her immensely to feel her attraction for such a man, for it seemed to her a promise that with another she would not lack charm and fascination. "What a strange method of courting," she said demurely. "If that's the way you're going on, I think I prefer to be shown the--" [Illustration: "Why did you do this?"] "The machines, of course," he cut in. "That's the trouble with you. That's all they ever understand--the things they see. But, my dear girl, _I_ am the paper; all the rest is only wheels, chains, links; every man here is only part of the machine. I only am the indispensable force." He had found an idea, and was off on its exposition, starting up, pacing and gesturing.