For the second time in one day Raoul Uhlan was guilty of a grave error in judgment. He decided to show the Celtic intruder in shirt-sleeves that he intended to pursue his own paths without the intervention of others. He decided to show this diminutive intruder that a man of his dimensions and determination wasn’t to be trifled with. But something altogether unexpected seemed to intervene. That decision, in some way, evaporated under sudden and unlooked-for thuds of pain, thuds which, in the haze that enveloped him, he found it hard to account for. He was, in fact, suddenly subjected to many experiences which were hard to account for, the principal one being a misty wonder as to why an opponent so insignificant to the eye could be so explosive in his movements, so devastating in his fore-shortened arm-strokes. Not that the big-framed artist didn’t resist, and resist to the last of his strength. But the thing became loathsome to the girl, who no longer stood aside in a cold and impersonal fury. For the nose above the once airy mustache bled prodigiously and left tell-tale maculations on the studio-floor. The easel went down with a crash, and gasps and grunts became odiously labored. The dazed big frame staggered back and wabbled against the table, and Teddie, realizing that she had trifled with darker and deeper currents than she had dreamed, felt a good deal like a murderess, and could stand it no more. She was a trifle faint and sick and uncertain in the knee-joints. “Oh, take him away, take him away!” she pleaded childishly, with her hands held over her face to shut out the horror of it all. And the triumphant Gunboat Dorgan took him away, an inert and unprotesting hulk that was anything but good to look upon, a disheveled somnambulist with a right eye that was already beginning to close. Gunboat took the vanquished one to the stairway, and started him down, and then flung his hat and gloves after him. When the youth with the cauliflower ear stepped back into the studio and closed the door he already seemed to have himself well in hand. He was flushed and a little warm, but outwardly unruffled. He put on his coat and came and stood over Teddie where she sat limp and white, staring down at the overturned easel. And he in turn stood staring down at her, with his head a little to one side. “Yuh’re a thoroughbred,” he averred with unqualified admiration. “Yuh’re a thoroughbred, and I’m for yuh, lady, to the last jab!” Whereupon Teddie, who felt tragically alone in the world, began to cry. “Hully gee, don’t do that,” implored her protector, genuinely disturbed. But Teddie, oblivious of his presence, sat there with the tears welling from her eyes. She wept without sound or movement, with her face buried in her hands. “Why, your gink’s canned f’r yuh, f’r good,” he explained as he made a roughly gentle effort to draw her hands away from her wet face.