If John Aldous had betrayed no visible sign of inward vanquishment he at least was feeling its effect.  For years his writings had made him the target for a world of women, and many men.  The men he had regarded with indifferent toleration.  The women were his life—­the “frail and ineffective creatures” who gave spice to his great adventure, and made his days anything but monotonous.  He was not unchivalrous.  Deep down in his heart—­and this was his own secret—­he did not even despise women.  But he had seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps no other man had ever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had ever written.  This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admiration of the few.  His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purely artificial, and yet only a few had guessed it.  He had built it up about him as a sort of protection.  He called himself “an adventurer in the mysteries of feminism,” and to be this successfully he had argued that he must destroy in himself the usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.

How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know—­until these last moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray.  He confessed that she had found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood.  It was not her beauty alone that had affected him.  He had trained himself to look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at a beautiful flower, confident that if he went beyond the mere admiration of it he would find only burned-out ashes.  But in her he had seen something that was more than beauty, something that for a flashing moment had set stirring every molecule in his being.  He had felt the desire to rest his hand upon her shining hair!

He turned off into a winding path that led into the thick poplars, restraining an inclination to look back in the direction of the Otto camp.  He pulled out the pipe he had dropped into his shirt pocket, filled it with fresh tobacco, and began smoking.  As he smoked, his lips wore a quizzical smile, for he was honest enough to give Joanne Gray credit for her triumph.  She had awakened a new kind of interest in him—­only a passing interest, to be sure—­but a new kind for all that.  The fact amused him.  In a large way he was a humourist—­few guessing it, and he fully appreciated the humour of the present situation—­that he, John Aldous, touted the world over as a woman-hater, wanted to peer out through the poplar foliage and see that wonderful gold-brown head shining in the sun once more!

He wandered more slowly on his way, wondering with fresh interest what his friends, the women, would say when they read his new book.  His title for it was “Mothers.”  It was to be a tremendous surprise.

Suddenly his face became serious.  He faced the sound of a distant phonograph.  It was not the phonograph in Quade’s place, but that of a rival dealer in soft drinks at the end of the “street.”  For a moment Aldous hesitated.  Then he turned in the direction of the camp.