Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/228

208 "I don't get you," reflected Mr. Max. "No, pal, I don t quite grab this hermit game. It ain't human nature, I say. Way up here miles from the little brass rail and the sporting extra, and other things that make life worth living. It's beyond me."

"I'm not asking your approval," replied the hermit. "All I ask is to be let alone."

"Let me speak," said Miss Norton. "Mr. Peters and I have been friends, you might say, for three years. It was three years ago my awed eyes first fell upon him, selling his post-cards at the inn. He was to me then the—true romance—the man to whom the world means nothing with out a certain woman at his side. That is what he has meant to all the girls who came to Baldpate. He isn't going to shatter my ideal of him—he isn't going to refuse a lady in distress. You will come for just a little while, won t you, Mr. Peters?"

But Peters shook his head again.

"I dislike women as a sex," he said, "but I've always been gentle and easy with isolated examples of 'em. It ain't my style to turn 'em down.