some girl years younger than himself, than herself. How old was
he? Could it be that he was too young for her? As he seemed to grow
inaccessible, she was drawn toward him more compellingly. He was so
strong, so gentle. She lived over the events of the day. There was no
flaw there. He had considered her and Mary, always. And he had torn
the program up and danced only with her. Surely he had liked her, or he
would not have done it.

She slightly moved her hand in his and felt the harsh contact of his
teamster callouses. The sensation was exquisite. He, too, moved his
hand, to accommodate the shift of hers, and she waited fearfully. She
did not want him to prove like other men, and she could have hated him
had he dared to take advantage of that slight movement of her fingers
and put his arm around her. He did not, and she flamed toward him.
There was fineness in him. He was neither rattle-brained, like Bert, nor
coarse like other men she had encountered. For she had had experiences,
not nice, and she had been made to suffer by the lack of what was termed
chivalry, though she, in turn, lacked that word to describe what she
divined and desired.

And he was a prizefighter. The thought of it almost made her gasp. Yet
he answered not at all to her conception of a prizefighter. But, then,
he wasn't a prizefighter. He had said he was not. She resolved to ask
him about it some time if... if he took her out again. Yet there was
little doubt of that, for when a man danced with one girl a whole day
he did not drop her immediately. Almost she hoped that he was a
prizefighter. There was a delicious tickle of wickedness about it.
Prizefighters were such terrible and mysterious men. In so far as they
were out of the ordinary and were not mere common workingmen such as
carpenters and laundrymen, they represented romance. Power also they
represented. They did not work for bosses, but spectacularly and
magnificently, with their own might, grappled with the great world and
wrung splendid living from its reluctant hands. Some of them even
owned automobiles and traveled with a retinue of trainers and servants.
Perhaps it had been only Billy's modesty that made him say he had quit
fighting. And yet, there were the callouses on his hands. That showed he
had quit.

CHAPTER VI

They said good-bye at the gate. Billy betrayed awkwardness that was
sweet to Saxon. He was not one of the take-it-for-granted young men.
There was a pause, while s