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“O Mr. Rook!”

He enjoyed the sensation he was creating.

One girl, Margery Storey, who was young and had red hair, a combination that sometimes appeared in Saunders Rook’s dreams and private yearnings, whispered to him that she was sure he was disappointed in love; but, she added archly, there were plenty of uncaught fish in the sea.

He said sternly that love or lack of it did not enter into his plan at all. The act he was to perform was to be a perfectly calm, philosophic protest against the state of civilization in America.

“You will remember,” he told her, “how the early Christians walked naked into the arenas as a protest against the brutality of the gladiatorial combats. My motive, I hope, is equally untinged by any selfish emotion.”

His heart was accelerated by her glance, so full of compassion. She said a little diffidently that she was a painter, and would he sit for his portrait? She’d love to do it; her studio was Number 148——

No, he interrupted, he could not. Actually he wanted to very much. He was busy, he explained, on a series of essays for “The Liberal Voice.”