"Old man," he ventured, kindly, "don't you think you'd better lie down and try to take a nice little nap——"
Sayre instantly chased him around the tree and caught him.
"Curt," he said savagely, "get over the idea that there's anything the matter with me mentally except love and righteous indignation. I am in love; and it hurts. I'm indignant, because those people are treating my sex with an outrageous and high-handed effrontery that would bring the blush of impotent rage to any masculine cheek!"
"What people?" said the other warily. "You needn't answer till you get your wits back."
"They're back, Curt; that twelve-foot fence of heavy elephant-proof wire which we noticed in the forest day before yesterday isn't the fencing to a game park. It encloses a thousand acres belonging to the New Race University. Did you know that?"
"What's The New Race University?" asked Langdon, astonished.
"You won't believe it—but, Curtis, it's a reservation for the—the p-p-propagation of a new and s-s-symmetrically p-p-proportioned race of g-g-god-like human beings! It's a deliberate attempt at cold-blooded scientific selection—an insult to every bald-headed, near-sighted, thin-shanked young man in the United States!"
"William," said the other, coaxingly, "you had better lie down and let me make some wafer soup for you."
"You listen to me. I'm getting calmer now. I want to tell you about these New Race women and their University and Amourette and Reginald Willett and the whole devilish business."
"Is there—is there really such a thing, William? You would not tell me a bind like that just to make a goat of me, would you?"