“Mr. Dorgan,” promptly began Teddie, with a quietness which was merely a mask to her inner excitement, “I’m in a very great difficulty and I’ve been wondering if you’d be willing to help me out of it.” “What’s the trouble, lady?” asked Gunboat, a little stiff and embarrassed in his Sunday best as he gazed at her out of an honest but guarded eye. For the knights of the ring, in their own world and in their own way, have many advances of the softer sex to withstand and many blandishments of the rose-sheathed enemy to be wary of. But Teddie was direct enough, once she was under way. “I’ve just been insulted in this studio by a brute who calls himself a man, intolerably and atrociously insulted.” Gunboat Dorgan’s face lost a little of its barricaded look. This was a matter which brought him back to earth again. And Teddie saw that nothing was to be gained by beating about the bush. “And this man threatens to come here to-day and repeat that insult,” she went on. “And, to speak quite plainly, I want some one to protect me.” Gunboat’s face brightened. He moistened a hard young lip with the point of his tongue as he stood gazing into clouded eyes for which lances would surely have been shattered at Ashley. “Who’s the guy what’s been gettin’ fresh?” he demanded. Teddie, looking very lovely in a tailored black suit with an Ophelia rose pinned to its front, did her best to resist all undue surrender to the lethal tides of sympathy. “It’s a beast called Raoul Uhlan,” she announced, disturbed for a moment by the slenderness of her would-be champion. But it was only for a moment, for she remembered the flexed right arm Ruby Reamer had tried to caliper with her admiring fingers on the afternoon that the crayon-drawing had been made. “That puddin’!” cried Gunboat, with a touch of ecstasy. “Why, that guy tried to pull the soft stuff with Ruby last winter, but nothin’ put me wise until it was six months too late.” He fell to pacing the studio-rug, as though it were a roped ring, with significant undulatory movement of the shoulders. “Say, lady, what d’ yuh want me to do to that cuff-shooter? Blot ’im out?” There was a hard light in the pagan young eyes of the girl in black. “Yes,” she announced, without hesitation. “Then he’ll get his!” affirmed the other, just as promptly. “I want you to give him a lesson that he’ll never, never forget,” she explained, a little paler than usual. “I want you to show him it isn’t safe to insult defenseless girls.” “Oh, I’ll show ’im!” announced Gunboat, with his chin out and his heels well apart. “He’ll know something when I get through wit’ him. And he’ll have a map like a fried egg!” “But I don’t want you to——” “Leave that to me, lady,” interrupted her champion, sensing what he recognized as purely feminine compunctions. “Yuh’ve gotta know when to quit, in this business, the same as when to start. Just leave it to me, and I’ll do it, and do it right!”