“I imagine I can make a respectable appearance in refined society if I choose to try. Perhaps my family is just as good as the Budthornes. I’d rather confess to hailing from Texas than to admit that I was from Chicago. Chicago! Why, a decent white man will turn to a smoked ham in that town in less than three days! As for wild and woolly places, I declare Chicago lays way over Texas. A man is liable to be held up anywhere in Chicago in broad daylight. If he’s sandbagged and robbed, and makes a complaint to the police, he stands a fine prospect of being locked up as a vagrant. No one from Chicago can get chesty with me.” He was perfectly serious, little realizing the humor of his observations and attitude. Although naturally broad-minded and manly, he had been “rubbed the wrong way of the fur” by Nadia’s action, and, for the time, at least, he was almost childish in his resentment. The fact that he had this weakness, however, made his other manly qualities stand out even more clearly. “I’ll show her how much I care!” he continued. “I’ll just hold my head up and keep out of her way. Let her go it! Let her flirt with Turks! If she does, she’ll be sorry!” He paused. The picture of Nadia making eyes at a handsome Turkish gentleman rose before him. He fancied he was willing she should do anything she wished, but now, all at once, he realized that she could hurt him very much in case she disdained him and turned her attention in other directions. He had been bluffing when he ran away from her, and he knew it now. As a rule he was able and willing to back up any bluff he made, but now his reason told him he would weaken immediately in case this bluff was called. What if Nadia became offended by his ungentlemanly behavior in running away from her when she called to him and tried to overtake him? What if that one bad break of his should cause her in future to regard him with indifference or aversion? “Oh, ginger!” he exclaimed. “I couldn’t stand that! It would drive me to suicide! I’m a chump, and I can’t help it! Dick is with her. Perhaps she’ll get smitten on him!” This thought added to his agitation. “How can she help it?” he muttered, again fiercely pacing the floor. “Dick is the sort of fellow all the girls care for. He’s far superior to me, and I don’t see how she came to be interested the least bit in me in the first place. Of course, there is June Arlington and Doris Templeton—but they’re on the other side of the Atlantic, and I don’t believe there ever yet was a pretty girl who did not believe she could cut out another girl if she really tried.