The clique which had rated his reticence stingy was eager to believe. They needed no persuading. So no throngs gathered round him any more. Those who had fawned passed by on the far side of the street, lest crudely he recall past accommodations. And, passing, they smiled. And the public, that public to which a world's champion was something picturesque at which to crane the neck, if they recognized him at all now, had to concentrate to remember what it was that they had read lately about him. Crooked? That was bad. Not clever enough to get away with it? That was worse. Yellow? Well, that was unpardonable in any man. And they hardly hid their contempt. After a few fruitless attempts Perry gave up trying to find a new manager and sought bouts for himself. He found them, but on such terms that they were always impossible. He challenged Jimmy Montague, which was a bad tactical error, but he had been just a little panicky at first. He challenged Montague who was being hailed as the logical title-holder, and in so doing seemed tacitly to admit that he realized the claim was good. Montague ignored him. He challenged Holliday, and he was afraid of Holliday, too. And Holliday made game of him noisily. "What'll it get me to fight you?" he wanted to know. "If I stub me toe and fall down, somebody'll raise a yelp that you bought me off. Not me! Us girls has got to be careful. Besides, I'm looking for a battle with the real champ." It can't be done? Oh, they did it. The night that Cecille Manners had hysterics and Felicity was hurrying because she knew that Fiegenspann would "bawl her out" if she was very late, Perry Blair had been standing from eleven o'clock until a quarter to twelve on the corner of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street, too proud to turn the collar of his light coat up against the winter cold, too broke to buy a heavy one. He'd almost decided to hunt a job, anything that would bring enough to take him back home. The Dream? Girl o' Mine? It hurt his throat to think of these,--made him blink his eyes. So they had undermined him. He was standing on a corner wondering what it was all about. But in that last three-quarters of an hour he had achieved something at least, a terse sentence that must, it seems, epitomize the sentiments of every idol who ever shared his predicament, every king who ever lacked a throne. He nodded his head over it, and voiced it pensively. "It's a great world," he muttered, "if you don't weaken." Then he saw that she would very likely be killed if someone didn't do something about it besides shout. He weighed the chances, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and decided they were such that any good gambler could scarcely ignore. So he bunched his muscles and sprang.