y
provided. Why should I live in the smoke and sordid clutter of a town
when I love the clean outdoors? The best citizen is the man with a
sound mind and a strong, healthy body; and the only obligation any of
us has to society is not to be a burden on society. So I live in the
wilds the greater part of the year, I keep my muscles in trim, and I
have always food for myself and for any chance wayfarer--and I can look
everybody in the eye and tell them to go to the fiery regions if I
happen to feel that way. What business would I have running a grocery
store, or a bank, or a real-estate office, when all my instincts rebel
against it? What normal being wants to be chained to a desk between
four walls eight or ten hours a day fifty weeks in the year? I'll bet
a nickel there was many a time when you were clacking a typewriter for
a living that you'd have given anything to get out in the green fields
for a while. Isn't that so?"

Hazel admitted it.

"You see," Bill concluded, "this civilization of ours, with its
peculiar business ethics, and its funny little air of importance, is a
comparatively recent thing--a product of the last two or three thousand
years, to give it its full historic value. And mankind has been a
great many millions of years in the making, all of which has been spent
under primitive conditions. So that we are as yet barbarians, savages
even, with just a little veneer. Why, man, as such, is only beginning
to get a glimmering of his relation to the universe. Pshaw, though! I
didn't set out to deliver a lecture on evolution. But, believe me,
little person, if I thought that any great good or happiness would
result from my being elsewhere, from scrapping with my fellows in the
world crush, I'd be there with both feet. Do you think you'd be more
apt to care for me if I were to get out and try to set the world afire
with great deeds?"

"That wasn't the question," she returned distantly, trying, as she
always did, to keep him off the personal note.

"But it is the question with me," he declared. "I don't know why I let
you go on flouting me." He reached over and caught her arm with a grip
that made her wince. The sudden leap of passion into his eyes
quickened the beat of her heart. "I could break you in two with my
hands without half trying--tame you as the cave men tamed their women,
by main strength. But I don't--by reason of the same peculiar feeling
that would keep me from kicking a ma