“Folly, little sister!  I may as well be truthful!  Two dark eyes which gave me the first honest, unafraid, and frank gaze I’ve had from a maid in two years, two red lips which said ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’!  A flash of a glance behind her which called me, even if she did not mean it as a call—­and so, on I fare in a lunatic’s dream.  Own up!  I have dreamed that some day I will see her again.  And down in the depths of me stirs that impulse of the male which makes the peacock spread his feathers and silly man perk in front of a mirror.  Why not give in to the sense of heredity once in a while even though it means beating up a tramp and making myself more of a mark for human eyes?”

He rolled the old clothes into a bundle and stuffed them under the roots of a tree.  Then he strolled away leisurely, and when he as in the wider stretches of the wood where the light was better he pulled a small book from his pocket and read as he walked.

The volume was Sartor Resartus.  His eyes happened to find this passage and he smiled as he read: 

All visible things are emblems.  Hence clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.  Clothes, from the King’s mantle downward, are emblematic not of want only but of a manifold cunning victory over want.  Men are properly said to be clothed with authority, clothed with beauty, with curses and the like.  It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a vesture; which indeed they are:  the time vesture of the Eternal.  Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit of raiment, put on for a season and to be laid off.  Thus in this one pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been; the whole Eternal Universe and what it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies in the Philosophy of Clothes.

From time to time he looked down upon himself complacently.

When he came near a glade in the wood he heard the chatter of the voices of a merry party and he saw picnickers, men and women, gathered about hampers.  Automobiles were parked at a little distance, and he made a detour to avoid the scene.

He emerged upon an animated tableau of modern nymph and modish satyr in a close-by forest aisle.  The girl was flushed and disheveled and was resisting a young man who had pushed aside her veil and was kissing her with ardor.  She beat him back with her gloved hands and eluded him, but he caught her to him with more of rough passion than tender affection.

“We are engaged to be married,” he insisted.  “Why shouldn’t I kiss you?  Don’t be a prude!”

She thrust her protesting palms against him and set her arms rigidly and held her head away, not with coyness, but with indignation and fierce rebellion.

“I love you!  My God, can’t you understand?” he gasped.  “I can’t keep my hands off you.  You can’t handle a man as you’re trying to handle me.  I must have some affection from you!”