Butch--why, everybody'd despise him. But not Billy. You see, he
can afford to. He's got a rep as a fighter, an' when he just
stood back 'an' let Butch have his way, everybody knew he wasn't
scared, or backin' down, or anything. He didn't care a rap for
Lily Sanderson, that was all, an' anybody could see she was just
crazy after him."

The telling of this episode caused Saxon no little worry. Hers
was the average woman's pride, but in the matter of
man-conquering prowess she was not unduly conceited. Billy had
enjoyed her dancing, and she wondered 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