The pasty-faced man looked at him with thinly disguised contempt.  “You wouldn’t understand if I explained.”

“Mebbeso I wouldn’t, but you take a whirl at it and I’ll listen high, wide, and handsome.”

The man in velveteens unexpectedly found himself doing as he was told.  There was a suggestion of compulsion about the gray-blue eyes fastened on his, something in the clamp of the strong jaw that brought him up for a moment against stark reality.

“The intelligentsia of a country knows that there can be no freedom until there is no law.  Every man’s duty is to disregard duty.  So, by faring far on the wings of desire, he helps break down the slavery that binds us.  Obey the Cosmic Urge of your soul regardless of where it leads you, young man.”

It was unfortunate for the poet of Bohemia that at this precise moment Kitty Mason, dressed in sandals and a lilac-patterned smock, stood before him with a tray of cigarettes asking for his trade.  The naive appeal in her soft eyes had its weight with the poet.  What is the use of living in Bohemia if one cannot be free to follow impulse?  He slipped an arm about the girl and kissed the crimson lips upturned to him.

Kitty started back with a little cry of distress.

The freedom taken by the near-poet was instantly avenged.

A Cosmic Urge beat in the veins of the savage from Arizona.  He took the poet’s advice and followed his Lawless Impulse where it led.  Across the table a long arm reached.  Sinewy fingers closed upon the flowing neckwear of the fat-faced orator and dragged him forward, leaving overturned glasses in the wake of his course.

The man in velveteens met the eyes of the energetic manhandler and quailed.  This brown-faced barbarian looked very much like business.

“Don’t you touch me!  Don’t you dare touch me!” the apostle of anarchy shrilled as the table crashed down.  “I’ll turn you over to the police!”

Clay jerked him to his feet.  Hard knuckles pressed cruelly into the soft throat of the Villager.  “Git down on yore ham bones and beg the lady’s pardon, Son of the Stars, or I’ll sure make you see a whole colony of yore ancestors.  Tell her you’re a yellow pup, but you don’t reckon you’ll ever pull a bone like that again.  Speak right out in meetin’ pronto before you bump into the tears and woe you was makin’ heap much oration about.”

The proprietor of the cafe seized the cowpuncher by the arm hurriedly.  “Here, stop that!  You get out of the place!  I’ll not stand for any rough-house.”  And he murmured something about getting in bad with the police.  Clay tried to explain.  “Me, I’m not rough-housing.  I’m tellin’ this here Lord of Life to apologize to the little lady and let her know that he’s sorry he was fresh.  If he don’t I’ll most ce’tainly muss up the Sublimity of his Ego.”

The companions of the poet rushed forward to protest at the manhandling of their leader.  Those in the rear jammed the front ones close to Clay and his captive.  The cowpuncher gently but strongly pushed them back.