ondered if that were all. If Charley Long bullied up to him would he
let her go as he had let Lily Sanderson go? He was not a marrying
man; nor could Saxon blind her eyes to the fact that he was eminently
marriageable. No wonder the girls ran after him. And he was a
man-subduer as well as a woman-subduer. Men liked him. Bert Wanhope
seemed actually to love him. She remembered the Butchertown tough in the
dining-room at Weasel Park who had come over to the table to apologize,
and the Irishman at the tug-of-war who had abandoned all thought of
fighting with him the moment he learned his identity.

A very much spoiled young man was a thought that flitted frequently
through Saxon's mind; and each time she condemned it as ungenerous. He
was gentle in that tantalizing slow way of his. Despite his strength,
he did not walk rough-shod over others. There was the affair with Lily
Sanderson. Saxon analysed it again and again. He had not cared for the
girl, and he had immediately stepped from between her and Butch. It was
just the thing that Bert, out of sheer wickedness and love of trouble,
would not have done. There would have been a fight, hard feelings, Butch
turned into an enemy, and nothing profited to Lily. But Billy had done
the right thing--done it slowly and imperturbably and with the least
hurt to everybody. All of which made him more desirable to Saxon and
less possible.

She bought another pair of silk stockings that she had hesitated at
for weeks, and on Tuesday night sewed and drowsed wearily over a new
shirtwaist and earned complaint from Sarah concerning her extravagant
use of gas.

Wednesday night, at the Orindore dance, was not all undiluted pleasure.
It was shameless the way the girls made up to Billy, and, at times,
Saxon found his easy consideration for them almost irritating. Yet she
was compelled to acknowledge to herself that he hurt none of the other
fellows' feelings in the way the girls hurt hers. They all but asked
him outright to dance with them, and little of their open pursuit of him
escaped her eyes. She resolved that she would not be guilty of throwing
herself at him, and withheld dance after dance, and yet was secretly
and thrillingly aware that she was pursuing the right tactics. She
deliberately demonstrated that she was desirable to other men, as he
involuntarily demonstrated his own desirableness to the women.

Her happiness came when he coolly overrode her objections and insisted
on two d