“Pardon me,” she entreated.  “I seldom feel like laughing, but I almost do now.  I have encountered so many curious people and have heard so many curious things during the past twenty-four hours.  You don’t believe in concealing your thoughts out here in the wilderness, do you?”

“I haven’t expressed my thoughts,” he corrected.  “I was telling you what they think.”

“Oh-h-h—­I beg your pardon again!”

“Not at all,” he answered lightly, and now his eyes were laughing frankly into her own.  “I don’t mind informing you,” he went on, “that I am the biggest curiosity you will meet between this side of the mountains and the sea.  I am not accustomed to championing women.  I allow them to pursue their own course without personal interference on my part.  But—­I suppose it will give you some satisfaction if I confess it—­I followed you into Bill’s place because you were more than ordinarily beautiful, and because I wanted to see fair play.  I knew you were making a mistake.  I knew what would happen.”

They had passed the end of the street, and entered a little green plain that was soft as velvet underfoot.  On the farther side of this, sheltered among the trees, were two or three tents.  The man led the way toward these.

“Now, I suppose I’ve spoiled it all,” he went on, a touch of irony in his voice.  “It was really quite heroic of me to follow you into Bill’s place, don’t you think?  You probably want to tell me so, but don’t quite dare.  And I should play up to my part, shouldn’t I?  But I cannot—­not satisfactorily.  I’m really a bit disgusted with myself for having taken as much interest in you as I have.  I write books for a living.  My name is John Aldous.”

With a little cry of amazement, his companion stopped.  Without knowing it, her hand had gripped his arm.

“You are John Aldous—­who wrote ‘Fair Play,’ and ‘Women!’” she gasped.

“Yes,” he said, amusement in his face.

“I have read those books—­and I have read your plays,” she breathed, a mysterious tremble in her voice.  “You despise women!”

“Devoutly.”

She drew a deep breath.  Her hand dropped from his arm.

“This is very, very funny,” she mused, gazing off to the sun-capped peaks of the mountains.  “You have flayed women alive.  You have made them want to mob you.  And yet——­”

“Millions of them read my books,” he chuckled.

“Yes—­all of them read your books,” she replied, looking straight into his face.  “And I guess—­in many ways—­you have pointed out things that are true.”

It was his turn to show surprise.

“You believe that?”

“I do.  More than that—­I have always thought that I knew your secret—­the big, hidden thing under your work, the thing which you do not reveal because you know the world would laugh at you.  And so—­you despise me!”

“Not you.”

“I am a woman.”