A prize-fighter. A bruiser. A plug-ugly. But--but--why, that wasn't possible. And if your idea of such a one is what Cecille's once was, neither will he fill your eye. Just a kid. Hamilton had hit it off aptly at that. Level-eyed and diffident of tongue, with only a hint of his hidden bodily perfection lurking in breadth of shoulder and slenderness of waist. A prize-fighter! Cecille fell asleep wondering how soon he would come again. As to whether he would come at all she was never for a moment in doubt. Once she had watched his eyes follow Felicity across the room she _knew_. But she hadn't felt sorry for him as Hamilton had. She felt sorry for herself and bitter against Perry. For the time she hated him. Nor did she have to wonder long. Perry came the next night and escorted Felicity to the Roof. And the next. And next. Then Felicity realized that it would not be good policy to make Dunham sulk. Indeed she knew her luck. Indeed she played the game. The third evening she left Perry at home with Cecille. [Illustration: Lucky interference.] And for six whole weeks Broadway nudged and watched it. Broadway watched Perry Blair's courtship of Felicity and Dunham's, if you can call the latter's unhurried pursuit that. Dunham was complacent and patient, Felicity's tactics were not new to him and he did not mind being made conspicuous. And Perry Blair never knew they nudged; never knew they laughed. There is some satisfaction in that. But it is far finer, I think, to be sure that Broadway never guessed at all of the other courtship which went steadily forward in the same interval, elementally, naturally as willows bud in spring. Perry himself was unaware of it. Cecille too--for a while. For Felicity left him oftener and oftener to the other girl. And almost immediately a common need for the companionship of the other was born in both of them. Upon the boy's part it must have been the urge to carry on his courtship, even vicariously. Lonesomeness was the way Cecille explained it to herself until with the passage of a little time she could no longer tell herself that lie and believe it. And that marked the beginning of a long bad period for her. She ceased soon to hate him when he spoke of Felicity. Whenever he observed haltingly, as he did over and over again, that it was no place for a girl like her (Fiegenspann's) and that she should be gotten out before it was too late, she learned to agree with him mechanically. Instead of hating his blindness, as persistently as she dared she swung the conversation more and more to other things. From the beginning she found it hard to make him talk about himself. That instantly set him apart from all other men in her experience. For they had talked of little else. And yet, when finally she had it from him, she found his ambition anything but vague.