"So you've been reading the papers!" Mincingly Devereau went back and picked it up. "Well-well! Ha-ha!" But hard after came again that half-blind, half-incoherent rage.

"Listen, now, you! You listen! Listen, and I'll give you an interview that's never been put on any press."

And he gave it to him, briefly, coldly. He repeated substantially what the carpers had said at the time Perry won the title.

"Champion?" he said. "Sure—because I made you champion. Because Fanchette wouldn't a'stepped into the ring with Jimmy Montague, or Jigger Holliday; no, nor even old Kid Fall. I know, believe me I know, because I tried him with all of 'em. Not for the purse that was offered. He wasn't looking to commit suicide at bargain prices.

"But you? He'd take a chance on you. Sure he would. Who the hell was Perry Blair, anyway? He knew that Montague'd cut him to pieces. Holliday'd have tore off his lid. So I swung him to you.

"And why? Because I thought you'd listen to reason. Oh, you don't believe it. Ask Dunham. Are you still such a hick that you don't know he was behind that match? Why, he's behind 'em all—nine tenths of 'em. His bankroll is."

"Whose right hand was it put Fanchette but?" asked Perry mildly.

"Pah!" slurred Devereau. "Pah! I coulda done it myself."

But Blair's quietness fooled him.

"I'm not saying that it wasn't convincing." He thought it time to placate. "It was neat. I've gave you credit. Sure! You looked great. You looked like a world-beater, in there against Fanchette. But that's just what I'm trying to get at. Oh, Dunham and I talked it over before anybody in this burg knew you were alive. That's what I'm trying to get at. You been crabbin' your own act; you been making it hard for yourself. You gotta play it up now. You gotta work different.

"Nowadays a champ has just two outs. He's got to be a glad hand artist, or a bruiser. That covers it. He's either got to be so popular that they don't care much who he fights, so long as he's a good showman, or he's got to take them all on as they come. All the hard ones, and the harder the better, till one of 'em puts him to sleep."

Devereau's voice acquired a whine, the plaintive note of a man whose sincere best efforts have gone unappreciated.

"And I had it all figured out. I been doing all the headwork for you. I figured how we'd sidestep Montague and Holliday—all the tough birds—just as long as we could stall 'em off. And pick up a nice piece of change. Your share'd be enough so's you'd not need to worry. And we'd made a great start. They were dead sick of Fanchette. The papers were wild for somebody new. And they put you over better'n we could have done it ourselves.

"But you gotta work different. They liked you at first. They ain't so dead sure they give a damn about you now. You gotta be a good boy. More of a mixer. The crowd has been waitin' a long time for you to loosen up and slip 'em a piece of news that can be cashed. And they're getting sulky. A'course that's my fault too. I admit it. But it couldn't be helped. There wasn't much you coulda tipped 'em off to, but you shoulda stalled 'em along. You should have promised 'em something when the time was right. But it's right now, now that you're matched with Hughie. You can tell 'em just how to get aboard. It's time, before some of 'em get good and sore, and begin to holler for you to meet Montague."

"I can whip Montague," said Perry. "Holliday I'm not so sure of. But Montague I can whip, the best day he ever stood in shoes."

It maddened Devereau again. Just when he was beginning to congratulate himself that his work was good.

"You can't lick him," he choked. "You couldn't lick him even if he was handcuffed and shackled to a ball and chain." He tossed aloft his arms.

"Champion! You, champion! Oh, my Gawd!"

He strode across the room. But he came back swiftly to the boy who had not moved in his chair.

"Get this now!" he barked. He was done with talk. Done with argument.

"Get this, because when I'm finished this time, I'm through. I've got my coin in this thing and so has Dunham. And we're going to drag down what we put in with a little something for interest. We're going to get ours, and then you can fight Montague and be damned—or Holliday. You can go throw your nice new title into the gutter as soon as you please, for all of me, and try being first prize sucker of the world for a change. But first I get mine. How I hate a fool!"

"You're fighting Hughie Gay a week from Saturday. All right. Hughie's a set-up. I saw to that. You can pick 'em yourself hereafter. But right now your orders is to let Hughie stay the distance. A week from Saturday. Is that clear? Have you got that—sure?"

Blair sat silent. It is strange how silence will fool a man like Devereau. He made one last try for peace.

"And if you behave; if you're a good boy maybe we're going to forget we had this little misunderstanding. There's others besides Hughie just as soft. But if you're dead set on finding out who is boss; if you want to know whether you're Dunham's man or not, why just cross them orders. Pig-iron's got ten thousand on that fight—ten thousand that you don't win by a knock-out, if you win at all. And if you cost him that ten—Well, just dump it, if you want to see!"

"I fight on the level," said Perry, "or I don't fight at all."

"Then you don't fight at all," said Devereau.

Blair held him a long time with an eye that was chill. His voice was quieter than before, if that were possible.

"I have sat here and taken talk from you, you vermin, that I'd take from no man, because I could figure no other way. They know, downstairs, that you are up here with me. If I kill you they will hang me, and I do not choose to hang for one like you. If I laid a finger on you, that would be assault, and you and your friends would swear me into jail. That would be high card for you. It would fill your hand. So I must sit here idle. But some day, maybe, I'm going to come upon you with no circumstances to hinder. And if I do I'm going to change you. You do not please me, as you are. Some day I hope to alter you so that you will be a curio, even to your own best friends. . . . Get out!"

The chill eye had frightened Devereau. It heartened him to hear that he was safe.

"We'll put you out on the street," he snarled. "You'll be standing on a corner, wondering what it's all about!"

"Get out!"

Devereau got.



CHAPTER VI

FELICITY CROSSES BROADWAY

And Perry Blair had wanted to see. He hadn't listened to reason. He hadn't been a good boy. His bout with Gay was a repetition of that with Fanchette, the former title-holder. A brief half minute of boxing, a feint—and Gay on the canvas for the count of ten.

He had wanted to see. He had been consumed with desire to see. And it had happened quickly.

The victory failed to raise a second wave of adulation, even a ripple, in fact. Instead it was received oddly with scarcely any comment at all. Even the papers had but little to say, and that little noncommittal. For there were rumors. Devereau and Pig-iron Dunham had done some preliminary work in anticipation of the worst. And after the worst had come to be they went to work in earnest.

It was Devereau, Blair's own manager—ex-manager, the day after the Gay bout—who gave out the interview announcing the severance of business relations with the champion. There were reasons, he said, but he was not explicit. He left them veiled at first, purposely obscure.

What was the use of discussing it? Blair was a fluke champion anyway. Everybody knew that. Chance had made him, chance which had been luckless for Jimmy Montague. Montague, he said, had been selected as the logical man to meet Fanchette, the man whose record entitled him to the choice, long before any word of the proposed match had been given to the public. But Fanchette, after his prolonged inactivity, had demurred at meeting, immediately, so formidable an opponent. So they had selected Blair, merely as a work-out for the title-holder. And the unforeseen had happened. Fanchette had proved to be through. Anyone—anyone could have whipped him.

But what about Gay? That was the natural question and they asked it. Blair had disposed of him, also in the first round.

But to that Devereau made no answer, no verbal answer, at least. He did not point out that Hughie was a set-up, a second-rater. No, indeed. He shrugged his shoulders—shrugged them almost audibly.

"I had nothing to do with it," he said. "Absolutely. Ask Blair about it. I've quit him."

Pig-iron Dunham, who paid the bills, and Devereau who was cunning, did just what the latter had promised they would do. In a few short months they put Perry Blair, light-weight champion of the world, out on the sidewalk.

It can't be done? It is done every day, in politics. It needs only a practiced hand.

For a day or two following Devereau's unsatisfactory laconism nothing developed. And then a bombshell exploded. Hughie Gay made a statement. He took oath, solemn oath (and cheap, too, for it cost Dunham but two hundred dollars), that he had sold out. Blair had realized that he was no champion; he had feared even him, Gay. So before the fight Blair had paid him well to throw it. And he had done so.

Thus, you see, they learned logically why Devereau had quit Perry. Devereau was square. Sure! This proved it. You said it! They understood perfectly those eloquent shoulder shrugs now. And they raised a righteous clamor. Perry Blair denied the charge, and offered to meet Gay again, anywhere, for any charity. And they replied, with equal logic, that every reputable club in the country should bar him thenceforth.

In a short interview, not as unsatisfactory as Devereau's, Pig-iron Dunham broke a rule and talked for publication.

"It is the sort of thing which has given a bad name to a clean and manly sport in this state," he said. "I sincerely trust, however, that all true lovers of the squared circle will put the blame where it belongs."

And in the meantime his paid mouthpieces parroted everywhere the words in which they had been drilled. He has no punch at all, they said; he can't hit. He has no science, they said; he is slow as a freight. He has not the fighter's heart. He's yellow—yellow! And that word stuck.

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.

Felicity's taxi had met a traffic tie-up at Forty-seventh Street which made further direct advance impossible. In obedience to her plain request for haste the driver had tried it to the west, found that way cut off, and so detoured to the east. When, however, he wriggled up to Broadway on Forty-fourth Street he had met with no better luck.

Here was a din of horns, of racing motors, of harried traffic police. But not much chance of progress. So Felicity paid him and stepped off the running-board into the thick of it to have a try on foot at the very moment when the nearest officer thought to have it cleared.

He raised an arm and roared, bull-voiced:

"Come on there, now!"

And promptly the drivers of the two cars which had been at the heart of the snarl, like key logs in a jam, both heckled, both in the wrong and filled with unsaid things, trod harshly upon their accelerators. Wire-wheeled sedan and lemon-tinted limousine, up-town bound and cross-town bound, they leaped simultaneously forward, as Felicity stepped between.

Bystanders screamed so efficiently that their shrill tumult drowned the wail of overtaxed brakedrums. But that would have helped Felicity little. Nor could the brakes, for that matter. The lunging start had been too strong, the space too short to stop in.

Perry Blair, about whom those who screamed had heard something unpleasant—oh, yes, yellow!—lanced down the narrowing aisle between radiator and fenders. He struck Felicity like a vicious tackler yet did not go down, but leaped again. As the cars crunched together they slithered through the crowd, across the walk, against a wall, into a heap. And the fall hurt Perry a little, even accustomed as he was to the taking of blows yieldingly. He was slow to rise. The girl was quickly up.

"Last down!" she gasped, but her exclamation was somewhat pallid like her wit. "Hold 'em, Yale!"

Then, while she still faltered, uncertain, shaken, the occupant of the lemon-tinted limousine came swiftly to her. He was a great hulk of a man, yet light on his feet with that nimbleness which seems often astonishing in huge people.

"Let me put you in my car, Miss Brown," he begged, "and set you safely across. Not badly bruised, I trust?"

She gave him a flash of a glance and gasped again, but this time inaudibly. His ease with her name did not surprise her. He'd seen her often enough to know that. But this, she realized, was the first time that she had really been impressed upon him. Not too steadily, therefore, that she might need assistance, she let him help her back across the sidewalk, to the car, and thus away. Pig-iron Dunham? Of course. Knowing Felicity there is small cause to wonder that she went without even remembering to thank her rescuer.

He was getting up now, the target of few eyes. Most of those who lingered at all were staring after Dunham, Felicity and the lemon limousine. And Perry was congratulating himself, even while with an odd, detached expression he watched them go, that he had damaged but little his clothing, when a hand fell on his sleeve.

Perry turned to find a reporter, Hamilton by name, peering at him quizzically.

"Forgot to thank you, did she?" he laughed. "Oh, well, better come along over to the Roof with me and watch her caper, and give her another chance."

Perry didn't know whether he liked Hamilton or not, but he didn't instinctively distrust him.

"Who is she?" he asked.

"You really don't know?"

"I don't know many girls in this town."

"Hm-m-m," said Hamilton. "Thought everybody knew her. Felicity Brown. Aero Octet." And he repeated his invitation.

"She'll want to thank you for preventing damage to life or limb." He couldn't have said exactly what made him voice the rest, unless it was the way the boy's eyes had followed her.

"And believe me, damage to life or limb, it would have been an equal catastrophe to Felicity. Come on along."

Perry hung back.

"Don't you know," he hesitated, "that you can lose your reputation just from being seen talking to me?"

Hamilton laughed again. He saw, however, that Perry's mind was not upon what he was saying. And who shall say when fancy first was bred? Not you—or I—or even Hamilton. But the latter might have hazarded a shrewd guess. And a man, it would seem, has a little excuse for falling in love with a girl with Felicity's looks, whose life he just has saved.

"Come along," urged Hamilton. "I want to hear about that mess. I've been six months in Mexico." But he eyed the boy with deeper curiosity as they crossed Broadway.

"Who was the man?"

Perry spoke just once to ask that question, before they left the white-lit street for the elevator.

"Dunham."

Yet somehow Hamilton was sure that the other had known all along. And the quizzical eyes became malicious. If the boy was falling in love with Felicity he anticipated with glee unholy complications. Dunham's alacrity at the scene of the accident no man could underestimate. Pig-iron Dunham didn't, indiscriminately, beg young ladies to let the limousine bear them across Broadway in safety, or anywhere else, for that matter.

And yet, some hours later, when he had left Perry Blair waiting for Felicity at the mouth of the alley which ran back to the Roof's stage door, Hamilton found himself with little relish for the complications which he had so wisely foreseen. Perry's story of the trouble with Devereau and Dunham he had had in full, and believed. He had wanted to do something and realized that there was not much which he could do.

And now this. It was funny—but it wasn't so damned funny either. Why, the kid was just—well, just a kid. And Felicity had been sweet to him. Very sweet and simple, in spite of his own none too well curbed sarcasm. Under Dunham's eye—because she knew that Dunham's eye was always upon her—she had sat long at their table, a slim thing in new-grass green, so prettily grateful that she suggested pink sashes and dimity. And Felicity wasn't a pink-sash-and-dimity girl. Hamilton knew that. But did Perry Blair? Just a kid! Dammitt! But nobody, not even a kid, had any right monkeying with Broadway, or Felicity, if he couldn't take care of himself.

Yet Hamilton, after he had said good-night, lingered a while. And again—immediately—something which he had anticipated came to pass.

The lemon limousine was waiting at the curb. And Dunham stepped out of it, again with his preposterous nimbleness, when Felicity appeared. He stood holding wide the door. But the girl gave him only a nice little nod. She slipped her hand happily into the crook of Perry's arm.

Hamilton had a glimpse of Pig-iron Dunham's face.

"Hooked!" he exclaimed. "Hooked!"

But he had a good look at Perry Blair's too, as the pair passed.

"Dammitt!" he snapped. "Dammitt!" And yet folks wondered why a chap who knocked around this city hunting news sometimes drank more than was good for him.



CHAPTER VII

AS WILLOWS BUD IN SPRING

Cecille was still up, staring out of the window, when Felicity and Perry Blair came in that night. Perry stayed but a moment, only long enough to promise that he would come again. Then he was gone. And Felicity was standing before the other girl, every line of her pulsing triumph.

"Not him!" Cecille cried. She could not have understood the triumph better had Felicity explained with a torrent of words.

"Oh, not him!" with quick, unthinking horror. "He—he's only a boy."

"Who?" demanded Felicity blankly.

"Mr—Mr. Blair."

Felicity's laugh was staccato.

"Him? Good Lord, no. Dunham!" She fairly sang it. "Dunham. Pig-iron Dunham. I knew if I waited I'd cop. Now watch me. Watch my dust!"

Cecille wondered why she didn't pack her bag and get out. But she didn't. She stayed. And later, a little timidly, she inquired about Blair.

"Perry Blair?" Felicity with a racing tongue had been describing how Dunham led her away from the near-accident.

"Perry? Oh, he's a prize-fighter. Light-weight champion, or he was for a minute or so. He wouldn't play the game when he had his chance, I guess, so Dunham and the bunch broke him. Something like that. I never did hear the inside stuff. But they say he was a bust anyway—just a morning-glory—and didn't know his luck. But do I? Did I play the game to-night? Did I pass up Pig-iron and his limousine to come home in a flat-wheeled trolley with my hero, who's already made him sore once? Oh, didn't I though! I guess I'm crazy!"

Cecille recoiled a little from that.

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.



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.

"I like animals," he told her on one such occasion, "and the—the country. I guess that's what I am, a country boy. I sure would like to own a ranch."

He'd not pressed her so eagerly for her hopes. Scarcely. His singleness of interest at least was wholly masculine. But that didn't deter her. She found herself giving them to him just the same, just as eagerly.

"A ranch!" she seized hungrily upon that word. "A home! A white house on a hill with light green shutters. The house, of course, not the hill." She went further.

"And a white and blue kitchen." Her haste to tell him was bubbling. "With aluminum pots and pans. Dozens! A whole set!"

And, somehow subdued:

"They're very expensive."

Broadway never knew anything about that courtship. But Felicity used to wake up, now and then, and hear the other girl crying softly in the night.

It was a long bad period for Cecille. At first the birth of this wholly new thing within her baffled her own power to reason. She watched its mushroom growth with fascination, just a little aghast. But when, all in a kind of cataclysmic flash, she thought to recognize it for what it was, she shrank away as if from a malignant fungus.

From the first evening one thing had intrigued her. Her discovery that the sensation of pervading cleanliness which she always had from him was not a result of the careful clothes he wore but something more essential made her remember how the Sunday-groomed louts of other days, reeking with cheap toilet water and hair oil, had filled her with dull loathing. She had never attempted an analysis of that distaste. Now trying to analyze its opposite, in the case of Perry Blair, she arrived at a disquieting certainty. She found she could no more be near him, no more glance at him, without being conscious of him physically, than she could strike her head against a wall and not be hurt.

She realized more. She realized how keenly she liked being near him. She realized how often, and for how long, she had been making little opportunities to stand close, so that her shoulder brushed his. How often she had contrived a fleeting contact of their hands. And yet if anybody had tried to tell her that this was the blooming of a perfect thing to be cherished all her days she would have suffered unutterably that she had been found out. As it was she suffered sufficiently. She cried too often into her pillow. But she wasn't yet wholly debased in her own eyes. That came directly, inevitably.

One Saturday afternoon, urged more enthusiastically by him than she had ever been urged before, she accompanied him to a gymnasium far uptown.

"I'm keeping in shape, you see," he told her without his usual diffidence. "I don't know quite why. Everybody says I'm through, but sometimes I think something may turn up. Enough to bring me a little stake anyhow. And, anyway, it pays me a little. I'm working out with Jack English. He's a welter; he's getting ready for a go with Levitt. I've told you a lot about this business, but you can't judge much just from talk. I—I'd like to have you come up and watch me box."

There it was, of a sudden. There was his shyness again, so lamely come upon him that it colored his face. And the halting boyishness of the request had warmed Cecille's face too; warmed her through and through. She knew an impulse to hug his head to her breast, a very mature and motherly impulse.

He had told her much of this business; so much that she hardly recoiled from it at all. A welter—yes, she understood that. Between a light-weight and a middle.

But she hesitated so long that he thought he had guessed her objection and hastened to reassure her.

"There won't be anybody there," he said. "Nobody. Just English and his trainer and me. You needn't be afraid—"

"I'm not," she stopped him. "It's not—that."

So she went.



CHAPTER VIII

MY LAD

She found herself an hour later in a huge light room, with a floor like a dance hall and much strange paraphernalia against the walls. Little of it she was able to identify, though she took it all in with alert and eager eyes. This was the chiefest part of his life, so she must not even seem to slight it. The Indian clubs and dumb-bells—but they were easy. And the roped-off square at one end. That was the ring.

She found herself alone for a while, and was thrilled and excited and very happy. And then a quiet man who was, she guessed correctly, English's trainer came briskly toward her.

"You needn't be afraid." So Perry had assured her.

Surely not if this man's bearing was any criterion. He brought her a chair.

"Thank you." Her voice sounded small in that high-ceiled room. He only bowed in reply and went quietly away.

And then the next time she looked up it was to find Perry standing there beside her—a different Perry—a pagan Perry, stripped of all save trunks and shoes, yet unconscious of his nakedness.

"I'm not afraid," she'd told him. "It's not that."

Now she knew why she had hesitated about coming. And she was sorry, and breathlessly glad.

A pagan Perry, and one more beautiful than she otherwise could ever have dreamed. And yet, after the first startled glance, while she still dropped her head and put palms to her cheeks to hide a furious color, his lack of self-consciousness dismayed her, until it occurred to her that these were his working clothes—casual, ordinary. And with that a queer thought, seemingly unrelated, flashed through her head. She remembered that women almost never went to prize-fights—it was a man's sport—and she was jealously glad over that.

It shamed her. But she looked again. And again. And sudden rebellion at that shame led her to a wholly spontaneous, wholly unconsidered act. Perry was deep in abstraction. She knew what he was brooding over. That made her rebellious, too. Suddenly she reached out and laid her hand upon his bare shoulder.

He looked around and smiled.

"Hard?" He believed he understood the expression he had surprised in her eyes.

"I'm in pretty good shape. I'm pretty hard."

She made only a muffled attempt at reply. She found it, without speaking, hard enough to breathe.

Hard? Yes. Unexpectedly undeniable, like a billiard ball. Nor could she very well stammer that it was the smoothness of his skin which had stunned her. She dropped her head again. She could not have kept it up after that and kept her eyelids open.

When she finally lifted it Perry was already in the ring and English vaulting the ropes. English was as unclothed as the other, yet she found immediately that she could look at him without any disturbing mixture of ecstasy and guilt. And even critically, too. He was thick, bulky. He did not make one catch one's breath. And brown. And Perry's whiteness! She took her lower lip between her teeth.

"Time!" the trainer called.

She cried sharply aloud.

The sound came unsummoned, in spite of herself.

Why, they had just been standing there together—just talking—just laughing—just boys! But with that signal they had exploded into action. No other word could hope to convey that sudden burst of motion.

They touched gloves! She followed that. English tried to hit him! She followed that. And then thud! thud! thud! She could not beat as swiftly with one fist the palm of her other hand as Perry's glove struck thrice the welter's face.

Thud! thud! thud! And skip and shuffle—thud! And a straining, desperate embrace.

"Oh, he's so much bigger," she heard herself wailing. "He's so much bigger!"

And the trainer, remembering through it all her presence:

"Watch it! Watch it! Watch—that—left—hand!"

She saw then that it was Perry's short, jabbing, stiff left forearm which perplexed the heavier man. She saw the latter set himself to swing, and take it in the face, and go off balance. And set and take it again. And she didn't cry out any more. She leaned forward, so tensely set herself in every muscle that she found she was tired when the trainer stopped it.

"Time!"

The trainer she learned then was not pleased. He snarled at Jack English. But English only grinned.

"Slow!" he said. "Slow! Oh, boy! So'd you look slow trying to pace the Empire State Express."

And there was more. Faster, faster and faster. And cruder! He could never tell her again that this was merely sport. And English was bigger and his size did count. At the last he seemed barely to snap his right gloved hand forward, and Perry staggered back.

"Time!"

She thanked God, out loud, for that.

Perry stood for a while, his back toward her, sagging against the ropes. And English, one hand on his shoulder, was talking to him.

"Is he hurt?" she weakly asked the trainer.

He gave her a fleet glance.

"Some. Not bad." And louder to the other two:

"That's plenty."

A second later Perry nodded across the room to her and went to dress. But Jack English slid through the ropes and approached. There was some blood on his lip, and he wiped it away. She marveled at so little sign of conflict. He came straight to her, glistening with sweat. The trainer threw him a robe, which he wrapped about him to his very chin. She thought the welter-weight was bashful, too. And Irish—that without a doubt from his bright eyes.

"Your lad?" he asked.

"My—my what?"

She'd hardly been ready for the abrupt question. It confused her.

"Your steady?" This time he nodded toward the door through which Perry had disappeared.

Jack English was almost thirty—an old man for the prize-ring—and had a family. Under his bright regard Cecille stammered, and stammered a lie.

"Yes," she said, not steadily, and very softly indeed. "Yes, my—my lad."

English nodded sagely.

"Been worried about him lately, I suppose? Bothered by what folks are saying?"

"I—I haven't heard much," she said, and this was all the truth.

"Don't you!" he advised her. "Don't you listen. And don't you believe, either."

Still that bright regard. And thereupon Cecille realized that she had been troubled deeply by one thing which she had heard. Felicity had passed it on to her.

"They say he cheated," she voiced it, wide-eyed. "That he has a—yellow streak."

"So's a Bengal tiger." Such succinctness was reassuring. "A whole lot of 'em. And a man like him don't cheat. You'd oughta know that." Laconic, but good to listen to. And again:

"Don't you worry. I never saw a man so fast—so quick! That's why I'm using him. And some day—some day when he's in earnest—he's going to find out that he can hit. And they? They've said words that they'll choke then to swallow."

"I hope so." Her voice was meek and small.

"I know so," said English. "Don't you worry. You've picked a game guy. He can take punishment. You stick!"

"I—I mean to." Her voice was smaller still.

She wanted to cry.

And that night when they were riding home together upon a bus-top she tried an experiment. How long they had been riding thus she did not know, but all in a breath she was conscious of the contact of his knee. That was what she had been avoiding—trying to make herself avoid—ever since she'd grown aware of her impulse to stay always close. But now she tried an experiment. She contemplated the contact contentedly for a time. Then drew away.

Perry had been thinking of Felicity.

"Crowding you?" he asked.

She shook her head. And a minute later she let her knee move back against him. Proved! Instantly the tiny pulse had picked up its throbbing in her throat. Yet she let the contact endure. Defiant, she rode all the way home that way.

But the inevitable reaction came. Revulsion might be the more accurate word applied to Cecille. That night she had stripped off one stocking in preparation for bed; she had sat longer than she could have told, broodingly studying her bare knee.

"No smoother than he," she murmured at last.

The sound of her own voice smote her, the thing that she had said.

As her head flung up she encountered in a mirror her own reflection. She stared, transfixed, at her image; her moist, curling mouth, her dusky cheeks and eyelids drooping down. Then she closed her eyelids tight to shut it out. She groped and found the light and snapped it off. And she lay hours upon her face, her hair fanwise on her pillow, sick and debased.

She laid it to the pitch that she had touched. You had to be defiled. But she didn't blame Felicity. She wasn't that kind of a coward. It must be the slow poison of her frank creed. She'd fight it. Game? She'd be game. But this time she refused to wonder why she didn't pack her bag and get out. She couldn't. She knew she couldn't go. She wondered why she couldn't cry.

Thus she found a private little hell in what should have been pure glory.

But she fought. After she had admitted to herself that she loved him, she crouched from it like something in a corner. Love? That wasn't love! And yet Felicity in all her passionless calculation had never once—

It baffled her, bowed her down. It was too snarled now. She'd never make it out. But she wouldn't go again to the gymnasium. No! But what of that? She had only to close her eyes to see. She fought it.

It was a very hot though private little hell.



CHAPTER IX

DUNHAM TALKS BUSINESS

And presently Perry learned why he had been keeping in shape. Something did turn up. It happened in this wise:

Felicity had been very canny; she'd made each trump card tell. And with Perry Blair waved always in his face, Dunham had grown ugly.

"You know I'm crazy about you," he complained. "Give that four-flusher the gate."

"A million Johns have told me that," Felicity answered. "Talk business."

But Dunham had refused to talk business. He was ugly about it. And then he thought to see a way around. He sent for Perry Blair, and Perry came. That surprised Dunham. He had expected in the end to have to go to Blair. He did not know how Felicity, unwittingly, had helped him.

For Felicity, unable not to enjoy a little the boy's inarticulate devotion, had indulged herself. With artistry that would have called down from Hamilton even hotter sarcasm, she had let Perry glimpse her soul; not the cheap and tawdry thing which unsympathetic persons were likely to think it, but her real one, a little saddened, a little forlorn!

"I wish I could get away from all this," she'd said, with appropriate wistfulness. "I'm dead sick of it—sick of it all. I wish I could go away—somewhere—anywhere where things are clean. Where there are trees and growing grass—"

It was a very good speech. She knew it must be because she had heard a high-priced leading lady utter it in a three-dollar-and-a-half Broadway success.

And it proved effective uttered by Felicity. For it fooled Perry. Fooled him badly just when he had begun to speculate a little concerning her soul himself. Perry believed her. But then it is easy for any woman to fool any man. Twice as easy when he wants so badly to be fooled.

Perry cursed his lack of ready money. And then Dunham sent for him. And he went, hiding his eagerness.

They held the conversation in Dunham's book-lined office. The books were never used; the office saw strange usage. And the conference was short.

"Ready to be a good boy?" Dunham asked.

Perry rose to leave.

"Sit down," said Dunham. "That was intended as a joke. My mistake."

But it angered him; angered him almost as much as it did to look upon the boy's unsquandered youth.

"I've got something for you at last," he offered. "If you care to take it."

"I'll listen," said Perry.

So Dunham drew readily upon invention.

"We've talked it over," he said. "Devereau and I and some of the other boys. And we've decided that there's nothing in it for any of us as the situation now stands. The title's too obscured. You claim it. So does Montague. So we've decided to offer you a match with—"

"I've challenged Montague," Perry interrupted. "He paid no attention to it."

"Not Montague," Dunham corrected silkily. "Holliday."

And instantly Perry knew what Dunham hoped to do.

"Why not Montague?" he asked.

"Why not Holliday?" countered Dunham, his voice silkier still.

And Perry couldn't very well say because Montague was a boxer first and a fighter afterward. He couldn't say because he knew they considered Holliday, young, wicked, punishing, even more certain to whip him. He hesitated.

"But you're going to whip Holliday," Dunham went on tentatively, as if sure of what was in the other's mind.

Perry watched him.

"We're going to see to that. It'll be a twenty-round fight to a decision. Somewhere in the South. But you'll stop Holliday in the eighth round."

"I fight fair," said Perry, "or I don't fight at all."

"Don't get excited." Dunham was laughing at him a little, not pleasantly. "You'll be no party to anything—ah—iniquitous. Beat him before that if you're able. But it'll come in the eighth, don't doubt that. I'm just telling you beforehand so that you'll lose no sleep in case you're afraid of Holliday." That was a thrust. "I'm telling you so you needn't kill yourself training to get ready, though you don't look over-fed." That was another. Yet Perry felt that he had balanced them both when he looked the huge man's jelly-bulk up and down.

"Holliday's going to be champion some day," Dunham went unconcernedly on. "He's bound to be, whether we want him or not. But Montague comes first. Montague's been a good boy. We merely require your agreement to meet him should you dispose of Holliday, that is all. And since that is assured—" He waved a fat hand. "Personally I believe that Montague is very much better than you are—no offense intended—and against him you can take care of yourself."

Rapidly Perry cast it up. They were that confident of Holliday's superiority! And they didn't care whether he suspected their game or not; they weren't even bothering to work carefully. He could take it or leave it. He'd have to. That rank! That coarse! It was an easy sum. Two and two made four.

"Whatever agreement is fixed between you and Holliday is no affair of mine," he decided at last. "When?"

"A month—five weeks."

"How much?"

Dunham pondered.

"Twenty thousand. We'll give you five for your share."

They were that cool!

"Not me."

"A twenty-thousand-dollar purse seems reasonable," ruminated Dunham. "It may not be a popular match. And Holliday'll come high."

"That's your affair. I'll fight one way."

Dunham lifted an eyebrow.

"Well?"

"Winner take all."

"But you're certain to win! The fight'll be fixed!"

Perry sensed then how greatly the gross man wanted to laugh. Not bother to train? That old one! Did Dunham really think he was taking him at his word? Why, his mind in all the days to come would be riveted on just one thing—that eighth round. He wanted to laugh, too, bitterly. Did they think he was that innocent!

"That's your affair," he repeated. "I fight winner take all."

There are some who insist that Pig-iron Dunham was not without a virtue. His next words seem to prove it.

"Better take your five thousand," he suggested good-naturedly. "It's better than nothing. Holliday could double-cross us."

That cool!

"Winner take all," droned Perry.

"Winner take all!" Dunham snapped.

And that afternoon they signed articles, Hamilton acting for Blair.

The same night Perry told Felicity what he had done.

"So I—I'll either have twenty thousand dollars in a month or so," he made bad work of it, "or I'll know that I'm never likely to have it. If you—if you'll wait . . . I'm glad you like the country. I've always wanted a ranch."

Felicity was needlessly callous, either because it made her despise herself a little for the part she had played, or because she was just Felicity. Surely she was more brutal than she need have been.

For she sat, chin propped upon one hand, and stared derisively into the boy's self-conscious eyes.

"You poor hick!" she said deliberately. "You poor cross-roads hick! Twenty thousand dollars? Why, that's chicken-feed compared with my price."

In one way it was merciful. It was quickly over. Perry's self-consciousness passed. Calm as she had been impudent he surveyed her. Once his lip twitched; he half-opened his mouth as if to speak, and then thought better of it. He'd talk to no woman like that. He left her without a word.

And she sat biting her lip a little while, till Dunham came to the table.

"Honey—" he began.

"Don't honey me!" The words lashed back at him. "I'm sick of honeying. Talk cash!"

And Dunham was sick of temporizing.

He talked.

So when Cecille came in the next day, Saturday, at noon, and found Felicity with her bag packed, few words were necessary. She knew the moment had come.



CHAPTER X

CECILLE PLAYS THE GAME

Cecille had tried often to imagine what that moment was going to be like.

More than once she had dreaded that it would find her cheaply dramatic; that nervous sentiment would surprise her and break her down. Now she met it, unconcerned, without the slightest sense of shock. She had never doubted that Felicity would be anything but matter-of-fact and jaunty, right up to the end. Now it was the other girl who displayed unexpected feeling.

For Cecille had learned that morning that Perry was leaving at midnight for the South. With Felicity gone she realized how little chance there was of his ever returning again to frequent the apartment. And nothing else in the world much mattered. She was too deep sunk in misery even to try to dissemble her apathy. But Felicity had not forgotten a single night when she had waked to hear the other girl crying; she missed nothing of her present dejection.

"Well, I'm off!" This without even turning from the mirror.

Cecille failed to answer. She crossed the room and dropped heavily into a chair.

"We're catching the three-thirty this afternoon for the West."

Again silence for a while, and then a dry, strained question.

"Aren't you afraid?"

She'd made up her mind to ask at least that question. She had admitted to herself that she had to ask it. And her tone made Felicity wheel.

"Of what?" Felicity demanded, a little blank.

Cecille laughed. It was a woeful, croaking attempt at flippancy.

"Oh, the old line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and all that sort of thing."

That brought Felicity across the room until she stood, hands bracketed on hips, above her.

"Don't you worry about me, Cele," she said slowly. "Don't you nor any one else spend any pennies buying extras, expecting to strike news of my violent and untimely end. Safety First; that's my maiden name. I let Dunham drive thirty-five when he's sober. When he isn't, I walk. And I'm going to be that careful about deep water that I'll bathe always under a shower. Don't you worry about me." She paused soberly.

"It's you," she stated, "I'm worried about."

It was Felicity who displayed feeling at the end.

She stood quite a while staring down at the other girl's bright hair. Then with an air of definite purpose she drew up a chair for herself.

"I don't get you," she mused. "You're a queer kid.

". . . From the country?"

"I suppose so," Cecille admitted. "I didn't use to think so. I used to think we were quite—"

"That'll do," cut in Felicity. "I get it from that much description.

". . . Raised strict?"

"I guess so—pretty strict."

"Rigid church people?"

"Yes."

A little time of silence.

"Gee, that's tough!"

And Felicity's gravity at last had caught at the other girl's attention. Slowly she looked up.

"Why?" she asked dully.

Felicity sat and studied her—pondered her. Felicity's face was harder than Cecille had ever seen it before, and infinitely more tender.

"I hate to leave you," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if I could get you. If I could once get it through my nut what you're waiting for—what you expect there's going to be in it for you—it wouldn't be so hard. But I can't."

"I don't know what you mean." She had caught Cecille's interest now.

"Neither do I," she admitted. "Not exactly. That's why I'm talking. That's what I'm trying to get at." Her voice became half-absent-minded, ruminative, as though she were thinking aloud.

"They caught me young, too," she murmured. "Oh, that was a long time ago. Not measured in years, measured in time. There's a difference.

"A mission-school got hold of me. Good women, not brainless velvet pets from the younger set, looking for a new sensation. Good women, sincere women that wanted to help. Well, I was sincere, too. I wanted to be helped. I told 'em so; but I also told 'em I doubted if they could do much.

"I'd begun to get wise to one thing that early. I was seventeen, but I'd begun to see that all you got in this world was what you helped yourself to. But I was willing to try; I'd try anything once. If learning things out of a book would do it; if studying how to shoot the right language in the right spot and how to live sweet and pretty, inside and out, was going to get me what I wanted, well and good. Also, soft! There couldn't be any easier way, several well-known draymas to the contrary. So I gave 'em a chance.

"'Show me,' I said. And I stuck it out two years."

She stared at the ceiling, her eyes sardonic with reminiscence.

"Two years. Get that. Not two days, nor two weeks, nor two months. Two years. And did I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false teeth!"

Here she laughed, a slurring note or two.

"That cured me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat.

"'Show me,' I said again. That was what I wanted, a show-down. And did they? Could they? Bah! They talked! They told me I was making wonderful progress.

"'Sure,' I admitted. 'I'm on my way. I see that.' But what I wanted 'em to slip me was a little info as to where was I going.

"Well, they talked. What did I hope for? What did I want? What did I expect to get out of it? And I told 'em. Well, that was a pretty large order for a girl of my station. My station didn't figure, I told 'em; we'd leave that out of it. And I told 'em so plainly that they neglected to refer to that any more.

"But they took another tack instead. The things that I'd mentioned were mere material things! Like that—scornful—as if they weren't worth mentioning at all. 'Merely material!' And there was a better world to live in—oh, my, yes—the world of the spirit.

"'Do you live in it?' I asked. 'Do you?' They wore sealskin coats, when it wasn't mink or chinchilla. They were driving downtown every day in their own closed cars to urge me to be content with the things of the spirit. And when I realized that—No, I wasn't sore. I was just hep, that's all.

"'I'll try Broadway,' I said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.'

"They didn't believe me at first. They thought I was just bluffing, just talking because I was discouraged. So they talked themselves some more—a whole lot more. Beautiful words—but they didn't mean anything. Not to me.

"Did any of 'em say: 'Sure, I understand. You're young and pretty, and it's natural you should crave such things. Here's my last year's coat and a perfectly miserable old last year's model car'? Did they? Don't make me laugh! Not that they woulda missed them. Nothing like that!

"And if they'd only come out flat in the beginning and admitted: 'Sure, it's a fight—we know that—a finish fight between women like you and women like us,' I could have liked 'em for it. If they'd said: 'We want these things, so do you, and only men can buy 'em—take 'em if you can,' that woulda been all right with me. But did they? You know the answer. They were telling me not to rough it, while they all the while, every chance they got, were hitting in the clinches! They were chirping to me, 'Oh, see how lovely the things of the spirit are,' while they were hanging with a death grip to everything material that they could get their hands on. I'd been honest with them—sincere. And with me they had been as hypocritical as hell!

"But when finally I made 'em see that I was on, and that I was in earnest, it sobered them. They quit then that line of chatter. They were battling now, and they pulled another one. Sure, just what you called it a minute ago. The old line of stuff. They pulled that. They tried to scare me. Me! But I wouldn't scare, not for a cent. I was already scared half crazy—scared of matrimony with a drummer with false teeth.

"'Hell!' That was what they threatened me with. 'Hell,' they tried to warn me. "'How do you know?' I came back at 'em. 'How do you know? Maybe there's been slander here. Maybe it's not so hot. Maybe it's only semitropical!' And they couldn't beat that. They couldn't even tie it. But they went right on trying.

"'The wages of sin,'—they began. But I beat 'em to that punch.

"'They're damned fine wages,' I said. The cuss-word slipped out. I was always sorry about that. I always aimed to be awful respectful. 'They're damned fine wages! A car to ride around in,—sure, merely material just like yours, but better than a strap in the subway with all the men sitting down. And clothes—not shoddy rags. Clothes! Silk things, with lace on 'em, and rosebuds. And a place to live in with trees in the lobby and a tub level with the bath-room floor, and a chaise-something-or-other.' Oh, I'd been reading! I hadn't been studying for nothing. I knew!

"'I want to live in a world where things smell better,' I said. 'I'm dead tired of a world that stinks!'

"Well, they kept a'trying. I'll say that for 'em. Game—you bet. I don't believe they overlooked much either. 'The gutter,' they said. 'I'm in it now,' I came back. 'Your self-respect,' they said. 'Nobody else respects me,' I trumped that, 'or even cares that I'm alive.' And then I went after 'em strong. 'But give me the car,' I said, 'and the apartment and the clothes, and see. Why, I'll have 'em walking the length of every hotel dining-room in town, just to be recognized by me!' 'The men,' they said. 'Sure,' I agreed, 'the men. Isn't that what counts? Don't try to tell me that this isn't a man's world. I know! And won't they?'

"That stopped 'em for a minute. They didn't want to answer. They thought an awful lot of the truth at times, for folks that'd lie to themselves all day long. 'Won't they?' I wouldn't quit it. I made 'em come through.

"'Perhaps,' they admitted then. Alas, that was the way of the world. But it was wrong!

"'Sure,' I agreed again. 'Sure. You're telling me no news. But if the whole world's wrong, who am I to stand out? Who am I?' I wanted to know. 'Let's make it unanimous.'

"'The wages of sin,' they tried it again. They'd expected to put me down for the count with that one, and they hated to see it go to waste.

"'Can you show me something just as good?' I asked. 'Half as good? A tenth as good? I want to be straight. I'd rather be straight. Here's a proposition. You folks have got more than you can ever spend on yourselves. Pool a little of it—ten of you—and give me a job that you don't figure sinful. I'm willing to work. I've proved that to you. Guarantee me something a tenth as good as the wages I've mentioned, at the end of ten years—I'll not be thirty then; I'll take a chance on still being able to enjoy 'em—guarantee me that and I'll scrub floors for you in the meantime.'

"And then they pulled the prize crack of them all. I hadn't heard it before. It was a new one on me.

"'Virtue,' they said, 'virtue is its own reward.'

"Honest, I laughed. I couldn't help it. I didn't want them to see that I was wise to them. I didn't even want to hurt their feelings. It was pretty serious to them, this step that I was taking. But I couldn't help it. I laughed. And then I got mad.

"'Virtue is its own reward? Is it?' I asked. 'Is it? Go out there and stand on Fifth Avenue,' I said, 'and watch 'em roll by. Your daughter! And yours! And yours! Ten thousand of 'em, no younger than I am, no prettier, and no more moral right now. Go out and watch them roll by and then try to tell me that. Violets and silver fox! Is virtue their only reward?'

"Well, they'd not meant it the same way, in my case. I kept getting 'em wrong, they said. They'd meant it in the abstract, applied to me. 'But what about the wages of sin, in my case?' Had they been abstract there? 'Death—the gutter.' That was concrete, wasn't it? It sounded like bedrock to me. Then they wanted to explain. I wouldn't let 'em.

"'If you had been on the level I could have respected you,' I said. 'If you had told me, sure this is a selfish world and we are of it, I'd have liked you fine. I'm strong for a rascal, if he's an honest rascal. But I hate a hypocrite.'

"I'd got 'em between me and the ropes where I wanted 'em, at last.

"'I've wasted two whole years,' I shot it over from the shoulder. 'Two whole years, trying to compete with them'—I nodded toward the Avenue—'according to their own rules. And you've been coaching me, when all the while you knew I was licked, that way, before I started. Now let them compete with me, according to my rules, for a change. Let them run to their dressmakers and order their gowns a little lower and their skirts a little higher and lie to themselves and say they must keep in style, when they know they've got to keep their men and don't care how they do it. Let them try it—damn 'em!'

"I shouldn't have cussed. But I couldn't help it. I was bitter. If they'd only been frank and man-to-man about it. The toughest birds in the world stand in the middle of the ring and shake hands before they try to murder each other. If they'd just said, 'This is no pretty game, this is a finish fight,' I'd have loved 'em for it. I guess women can't be frank and man-to-man.

"One set of rewards for me—and one for them! Abstract for me—and concrete for them! Two sets of rules! It's time some authority drafted a new set, to cover both ends of this deal. But in the meantime—'I don't want to play that way,' I said. 'I'd rather fight!'"

Abruptly she stopped.

"And I've been fighting ever since," she spoke in a less urgent fashion. "And I'm going to keep on fighting—right up to the end. But you—is that the kind of stuff they slipped you too, Cele?"

Cecille had been listening without a sound, her eyes clinging to Felicity's face, which was twisted, somewhat awry.

"Is that what they slipped you too?"

Cecille licked her lips. They were dry.

"I—I guess so."

"And that suits you? You think that's fair and square?"

"I don't know," Cecille whispered dully. "I don't know."

"Then it's time you found out," Felicity flung at her fiercely. "I had to. It was put up to me just as cold. I didn't want to, any more than you do. They aren't my rules; they're theirs! But I had to decide. And it's time you figured it out."

Again Cecille touched her lip with the tip of her tongue.

"I've been trying to," she faltered. "But I—it don't seem to me as though I want as much as you do. I'd be content with oh-so-little. With a home, and a—and a man from whom I didn't shrink when he touched me and—and—" She could go no further. That was too vivid, too intimate.

It was Felicity who displayed her feelings at the end. And already she was beginning to scorn herself for having paraded them.

"Oh-so-little!" she mocked. She did not mean to be derisive. "Just that! Just a home—just a man—a real man—content!"

"Would you be?" Cecille asked the question unaware of the other's irony.

"Say, who do you think I am," she asked, "to try to dictate terms like that to life? What do you think I am? A champion? Because that's what you're talking now. The whole purse—or nothing! I know my limits. I'm going to be glad to get a fair percentage split for my share. A home! A man! Content! I get you at last, Cecille. It's you who'd better come to. For whether you know it or not, you're talking winner—take—all!"

She rose then. She shrugged her arms and stretched them high above her head, and all visible emotion slipped from her like a discarded garment.

"And that's that!" she stated easily. She went back to the mirror and adjusted her veil. Then came a brief and awkward moment.

"Well, I guess I'll be going," she said. "The rent's paid a month in advance. Don't let that Shylock landlord gyp you."

"I won't," said Cecille.

"Well, I guess I'll be going." She picked up her bag. They did not kiss each other.

"Well—so-long."

"I—I wish you—" Cecille checked herself. She had been about to say I wish you happiness. She meant that, yet clumsily she changed it.

"I wish you luck."

At that Felicity paused.

"Does this hat look all right?"

Cecille nodded. And then she was gone.

* * * * * *

So Felicity passes. No dark river. No swift oblivion. No agony of remorse. Those who may feel that her history is incomplete, that they have been robbed of their full meed of vindictive satisfaction, I must refer back to an earlier paragraph. And to those who may say, Here is a dangerous departure from the formula for such tales, there is only one honest retort. Felicity isn't a figment of fancy. Felicity's from the life.

* * * * * *

Cecille sat quiet after Felicity had gone, until darkness crept into the room. She rose then, mechanically, and prepared and ate some supper. Later Perry Blair came and she found that pressing as her own problem seemed she could still think first of him. She would not tell him now of Felicity's dereliction. He needed a single mind to face his coming struggle. He would learn of it soon enough.

Later still they went out and walked, till he had only time enough left in which to catch his train. Both of them were silent. Neither felt any inclination to talk. But Cecille's brain had been as uncannily busy as that of one who lies awake throughout a white and sleepless night. And she had believed this bodiless activity to be the process of sound reasoning; she had found some security in the conclusions she had formed.

But when they turned back toward the apartment the whole brilliant structure proved treacherous. It toppled. She was back where she had started, cornered, driven now for time. She couldn't stand it. He would go—and he'd never come back. Never! What was there in it for her? What was she waiting for?

Play the game? Fight? She knew she wasn't clever like Felicity, but she conceived what she thought was a desperate expedient, nor realized that it was pitifully transparent. There was no elevator in their building. Perry had a habit of striking matches to light the darker portions of the stairs, though that was silly. She'd told him; she knew every step of the way. But to-night when he struck the first one, she raced ahead. When it flickered and suddenly went out, she crumpled. At her cry, which brought him swiftly, he found her a little heap upon the stair. Her ankle was doubled beneath her.

"I've twisted it," she said.

She wasn't clever, like Felicity, and yet how simple it was!

He picked her up. He carried her like no weight at all. And she lay very close against him, her head on his crooked elbow, her arms about his neck. They had left a light burning in the box of a sitting-room. And as he entered there Perry Blair, looking down at her delicately parted lips and faintly fatigue-penciled eyes, breathed deeply once, and smiled.

He'd been quickly skeptical; he was certain now. No one who had just twisted an ankle was content and serene as that.

And that was when Perry Blair first saw Cecille Manners—first saw her with seeing eyes. He looked down at her and in that instant learned how infinitely precious and flagrantly bold girlhood like hers could be.

He carried her to a couch. She lay quiet, her eyes still closed. But when, after a glance at his watch, he would have tried to ascertain the extent of the damage, which he knew was no damage at all, she sprang erect, and flamed at him, and struck his hands aside.

"No!" she gasped. "No!"

And then she put her hands upon her face.

"I didn't twist it." Her very voice was dreary. "I just couldn't face it, that was all. I thought maybe, if you carried me upstairs—if once you felt me in your arms—ugh!" She made a sound, a gesture as of nausea. And yet, after a moment, with surprising steadiness:

"Had you just as soon go now? I wish—I wish you'd go."

He gave her her wish so quietly that when she looked again she was surprised not to see him still there. In the lower hall he stopped a moment and stood with his head on one side as a man stands who listens. He made as if to climb the stairs again, and shook his head. Holliday came first, and he'd have to hurry.

In the box of a sitting-room above Cecille sat and also listened. But she made no move as if to follow. She just half stretched her arms toward the stairway when finally she knew that he was gone.

"Oh!" she cried then. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, God!"



CHAPTER XI

POTS AND PANS!

The rest tells more quickly by far.

A raised, roped platform—two lithe bodies—a pavilion of white faces. Not the first round, nor the second, nor the seventh. The intermission which followed it rather, and a crowd grown strangely silent.

Perry Blair went back to his seat at the clang of the bell. Jack English was in his corner, and Hamilton, for he had been unwilling to trust anyone else. And lying back under their hurried, efficient ministrations he looked out upon the banks of faces.

They were tense; it was easy to see that, just as it was easy to sense that theirs was no ordinary tension. And he understood what it meant. Word had seeped from tier to tier, spread like a drop of ink in a glass of water, until it had colored the entire mass. Only a very select few were "in the know" of what that eighth round had been planned to develop, yet they somehow had leavened the whole audience with anticipation, by an indefinite word or two.

"The eighth," they were whispering among themselves. "Watch this now; here's where something happens!"

They had hooted Perry as he entered the ring; saluted him with catcalls and a few out-and-out hisses. He'd wondered then if any other champion had ever been saluted in just that fashion before; he'd tried to smile. He wasn't trying any more.

But Holliday was. Across in his corner Holliday was nodding to his handlers and grinning widely, just as he had grinned all through the fight so far. And so far it had been a mild battle, a showy thing of pretty footwork and flashy boxing. But it hadn't been harmful to either of them. Holliday, it appeared, had been quite content to let it go along that way from round to round, though it was the style of fighting best suited to his opponent. And he had proved himself faster at it, cleverer, than Perry had expected.

Yet it was not Holliday's cleverness, but his bounding, surging strength which compelled his thoughts. Strength like that, which tossed him like a chip in the clinches, was no new thing to him. He'd often been handled that way, with the same ease, by men heavier than himself,—by Jack English, for example. And Holliday was heavier; he knew that he had given away pounds in the weighing in; that there had been crookedness at the scales, but he hadn't tried to prove it. Yet Holliday was stronger even than Jack English, unbelievably stronger. And Perry knew now that he was about to test that strength to the uttermost. Holliday had romped with the roughness of a great puppy; now it was going to be different. It was going to be the destruction-rush of a young bull.

English too felt what was coming, just as he did; just as did the whole quiet house. English wasn't trying hard to hide his anxiety.

"He's strong," he was saying. "Boy, he's strong! Keep away from him—keep away from him all you can. For if he ever backs you into a corner he's going to knock you dead!"

Perry nodded. He meant to, if he could. He was going to try to keep away. And on the other side of the ring Holliday was talking easily out of the corner of his mouth.

"This guy's no set-up," he was saying. "He's faster than a fool. But kin he hit—that's what I'm wondering. Kin he hit? An' that's what I'm going to find out."

And then the bell, and the whole house leaning forward.

They came slowly from their corners, Holliday bull-necked, compact, a grinning menace, Perry lighter, whiter, sober. The first minute of that round was a repetition of all those that had gone before; lightning feints, nimble dancing steps, the cautious trickery of antagonists feeling each other out.

And yet the house, contrary to custom, did not grow impatient of such tactics and call loudly for more damaging effort. It waited. A minute and a half passed—two minutes—and they were going faster—faster. And then Holliday, grinning into Perry's face, winked broadly and swung wildly with his right. Perry stepped easily inside the blow and put his left to the other's face. It was a light blow, Perry knew that. There was no snap, no sting in it. But immediately Holliday winced as though it had hurt him and for the first time gave ground.

He followed Holliday up. This was the round in which Holliday was to quit, the round upon which Perry had had his mind riveted for weeks. He wondered—had Dunham after all been on the level with his promised crookedness? He followed Holliday up, carefully. And again a wild right swing, a light step inside, a light left to the face. And then Holliday, holding him with disturbing ease in a clinch, pressed his mouth close to Perry's ear.

"Shoot it over, now," he muttered. "Shoot it—don't pull it. It mustn't look too raw. I'm going to open up—start it from the floor!"

They clung in the clinch. The referee tore at them, raving at them to break. He pried them apart at last and passed between them to make the breaking cleaner. And as he did so, Holliday dropped his guard.

"Shoot it!" he hissed.

Perry wondered—but he knew better! He therefore merely made as if to set himself for the punch. He drove his right hand to the other's chin. But in that same instant as he took the blow Holliday lashed back at him, ferociously. Had Perry swung with all he had; had he been going with his punch; had he even been set firmly upon his feet to deliver it, Holliday's treacherous hook would have dropped him for the count.

As it was, though he had gone limply back, it spun him round and hurled him down. But it did not hurt him much. Lying half-raised on one hand, waiting out the count, he was thinking how like an explosion the roar from the audience had been. How moblike and blood-hungry. How the crowd hated him!

And Holliday was laughing down at him, leering. Double-crossed? Did Holliday think he was that credulous? But he had tested Holliday's strength and feared it more than ever. When finally he had to rise he dodged the other with a swift, sideways wriggle. The bell sounded almost immediately.

English was less worried than before, which was queer.

"That's the stuff," he praised. "Keep away and let him wear himself out. Let him beat himself."

But Perry questioned whether he was going to be able to keep away, and there was another angle to it, too.

"He'll be sure now that I can't hurt him," he thought. And that was exactly what Holliday at that moment was telling his seconds.

"Yu' got that, didn't you?" he demanded, again from the corner of his mouth. "Flush on the chin I took it. And it never made me blink. Hit? He couldn't dent cream cheese. If I'd ever a'ripped one into him like that I'd a'torn away half his lid. Watch this, now—watch this, because it's going to be good!"

And it was from his viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the partisan spectators. At the bell's call Holliday rushed across the ring, guard wide, gloves flailing. It was a spectacular rush, but Perry eluded him easily and slipped agilely away. Holliday whirled and blundered after him. Perry ducked under his swinging arms and danced again into the open. And then Holliday staged it, the scene which was going to be good.

Abruptly he ceased to pursue. He stopped and stood flat-footed in the middle of the ring, hands hanging idle at his hips, scowling after his opponent.

"Hey, you!" he bellowed, so loudly that his voice reached the rafters. "Wat t'ell do yu' think this is—puss-in-the-corner? Cut out the marathon, and come on and fight."

Indeed it was good; it was one of those dearly desired comedy moments which Holliday knew would grow epic in the re-telling. Holliday was a good showman. There were more cat-calls, more jeers, and cries of, "Yellow—yellow!"

And then Holliday went after him—and the house went mad. He blundered no longer in his pursuit, no longer played to the crowd. Like a blast of vengeance he struck Perry, enveloped him, smothered him in a fury of blows.

Perry tried to get away and couldn't get away. From the center of the ring to the ropes he was battered, staggering. He went down, and struggled up. And went down again.

He made no attempt to strike back, nor would that have availed him much. Holliday had tested his strength and was contemptuous of it. Holliday was boring in and in with crushing blows that tore past glove and guard.

The house was now a screaming, tossing bedlam, the ring a welter. He heard English barking at him. Cover up! He was covered up. Blam! He dropped and rolled away and came again erect. And blam! He was covered up, as much as any man could cover. And then a glove sank into the pit of his stomach and doubled him over, sickened him, racked him with white-hot pain.

He got away again. Fight? They were shouting at him to fight. Did they think he wasn't fighting? He was fighting with brain and heart and body to live this wild storm through. Again Holliday got him in a corner. Holliday's bull-strength was not believable. Again he got him just above the belt. And he couldn't help it this time—this time he had to do it. He dropped a little his guard. And then it happened. It struck him then. The roof came down!



As he lay head on the arm curled under him he knew it must have been the roof. By nothing else could he have been so smitten. The roof must have fallen, though the faces around him were still tossing and swaying, though the referee stood counting above him, though there was no wreckage. And the clarity of his mind astonished and pleased him. A brick roof—sure! A brick roof! That was unusual, very unusual. But it had to be that. It was a brick without a doubt which had struck him.

He knew the house was roaring—was sure of it—and yet he couldn't hear them at all. And that was strange, because he could hear the referee; he could hear Jack English. Jack was pleading—good old Jack!—begging him to get up. Apparently Jack didn't know that the roof had come down and stopped the fight. But the referee? Would he toll on endlessly before he noticed it? He should know; he'd been close at hand when it happened. He felt a warm emotion, a sense of comradeship, for the referee. He'd surely been square; he'd made Holliday break clean. He felt an impulse to joke with the referee, to banter him, and bid him count a million if he wanted to.

And then another thought. How easily he was thinking! With what precision! Yellow! They might think him yellow, even if the roof had fallen, if he didn't get up. They might think—At that he rolled over and discovered that there were miles of bodiless space between his head and his feet. It made the latter hard to handle, but he managed it doggedly. He climbed to his knees and wavered erect. And on the stroke of ten Holliday smashed him down again.

Yellow? Well, he'd get right up this time. He started to; he even staggered after Holliday who now appeared to be the one who wouldn't stand and fight, when he felt English dragging him back. Even English was against him. Holding his arms! Bound he'd lose! He lashed out at English; and then, like a distant echo, he remembered the sound of a bell.

He let them put him upon his stool and stretch him out. Let them work over him frantically. The brick from the roof apparently had cut above one eye, almost to the bone. But English was fixing it—good old English! He shouldn't have lost his temper and swung on English like that. English was propping the lid open and sticking it so with adhesive.

And then there was the bell. How light his legs felt, and his arms! And he'd doubted that the adhesive would do much; with the first savage slash Holliday tore it away and the lid hung closed again. But he could see from the other eye even though that seemed but a puffy mass. There was a slit from which he could look out upon an insane, tumultuous world.

So he complimented himself upon his cunning. They thought Holliday had blinded him; had closed both his eyes so that he could not see at all, did they? Well, he could! Oh, he was foolin' 'em. Champion!

Once he'd looked that word up in a dictionary, just after he whipped Fanchette; looked it up a little sheepishly, though he was alone at the time. Champion:—One who by beating all rivals has obtained an acknowledged supremacy. Then Devereau and Dunham were right. According to that he wasn't a champion. Nobody acknowledged him. But he'd teach 'em a better definition. A champion was someone who could go right on fighting when everybody was cheering for the other guy. A champion was somebody who could fool 'em that easy!—that complete! You bet! Who could fight and think at the same time, that clearly!—that logically!—like he was doing.

But he fell down often. Yet that didn't prevent this reasoning things out. And he didn't wait now for the count, either. He'd get right up each time, he'd decided, so that they could not call him yellow. They hated him so. But he knew the answer to that, too, at last. And that gave him something to laugh at, the way Holliday had grinned. Honesty was the best policy! He fair rocked with glee—and got up again!

Now English had him by the arm. He wouldn't hit English—English meant well if he wasn't a champion. He'd follow English docilely and sit down as he was ordered. He must have missed the bell again.

But English's crying, his whimpering, bothered him. It was a sniffling, wild-beast whine. That's the way a wolf or a tiger would sound, outside the circle of a fire's glow, unable to help its kitten or cub. But it annoyed him just the same—took his mind off important things. And what had English to cry over anyway? The roof hadn't fallen on him.

There was something about that that he hadn't yet got quite straight in his mind. If he could—if he could—A brick roof didn't sound right. If he could just force his brain a little further. It was urgent—he could fight better—it had a direct bearing on the fight. But there was that damned bell again. It interrupted him; broke in upon his train of reasoning. But he'd get up and fight some more. That was what they'd paid their money to see. He'd fight and try to think it out at the same time.

He rose and coughed, sick at his stomach—and sat suddenly down. But Holliday'd not hit him so hard that time, it seemed. Just pushed him maybe. That was the game—let him wear himself out! He got up again. Then he noticed another thing. The crowd had been screaming, "Kill him! Kill him!" for hours and hours. Now each time that Holliday struck him they groaned. Well, maybe it was time for him to hit Holliday; maybe that was what was the matter. He'd try to accommodate 'em. He pushed the referee aside and swung. But his glove met nothing. The floor came up and hit him in the face, that was all. Funny floor! Funny roof! No place to hold a prizefight. And where was Holliday, anyway? Holliday'd been playing for his good eye, till that was practically closed, too, and he couldn't see distinctly, couldn't see much of anything. He'd grope for him—he did it—and got up again!

They were shouting something else now. Could not suit 'em. "Take him out—take him out!" Who, him? He cursed at them, nor knew that he merely gibbered from frightful lips. They'd not rob him that way of his title! Then he saw Hamilton pick up a towel and start to toss it into the ring. Lucky he was near him! He grabbed that towel and flung it away—and fell down heavily—and got up again!

He wanted to curse Hamilton, too, but didn't have the time. He seemed to be hurtling to one side of the ring and then the other, yet effortlessly, as lightly as thistle-down. Couldn't stop for anything—Holliday insisted on fighting right along. He couldn't remember it was so long since he had laid a glove on Holliday.

And then again a lull. What was it? The end of a round, or the beginning of one? He'd better not sit down, or Devereau and Dunham would tell 'em he was yellow, and they'd believe. End of a round, apparently. English was crying over him again, whimpering helplessly. He wished they'd dispense entirely with the bell. Just fight right along—could keep your mind on things that way; he was awful sick—just noticed that!

And then he heard Hamilton trying to square himself for what he'd tried to do with the towel.

"He's out, I tell you!" Hamilton was saying. "He's out standing on his feet!"

So he was even fooling his own seconds! Out standing on his feet? Why, he'd been out for rounds and rounds! He didn't quite know how many. But that didn't make any difference—but then Hamilton didn't know much about the boxing game—he was just a sports writer!

"What round is it?" he asked. "Sixteenth!" Liars! Or maybe they were joking. Anyway, he knew better. The tenth or eleventh, perhaps, but never the sixteenth.

Was that the bell? No, he'd just kicked the water-pail? Shouldn't have a tin pail in the ring, not even a new one. Ought to be a wooden bucket. Well, they could just tell him when the bell did ring, and give him a little shove in Holliday's direction, if they would. That was it—all right—and the roof came down!

He found a way to remedy that; he'd hold it up. Hang onto Holliday's arms, that was it. They were awful sticky, yet slippery, but he'd try. And getting up was a slower business now in spite of himself. But if they couldn't see that he'd taken quite a bit of punishment and had a right to be a little dizzy, let 'em sit and sulk. They weren't shouting any more, that was certain; they weren't even groaning happily when Holliday hit him. And damn that roof! Or was it the floor? It certainly had been under the chin that time. Got to get up—and it didn't seem possible—didn't seem as if he could. Was that English holding him? Round was over? "Pardon me. Didn't hear the bell. They'd ought to have a siren!"

And so back to his riddle. It wasn't a brick roof—ah, there was the key to the whole puzzling problem. Let him once solve that—you just let him get clear on that point—and see!

The bell! Holliday certainly was polite. He'd come all the way across the ring in one leap to meet him. Saved him staggering miles and miles toward the other corner. And thud! The roof—but it wasn't a thud. It was a crash—a tinny clangor. Shouldn't have a tin pail—might have cut himself. He got up, and promptly ran into something and sat down again. It was easier to think, however, in that position. Tin! Tin! A tin roof? That sounded more like it. Only it wasn't tin; it was—it was—

"Got it!" he shouted—he thought he shouted, while men thought he was coughing blood. "Got it! Got it! Solved!"

And now that he knew the answer he could put his mind on this fight.

What round? The eighteenth? They'd lost count probably, but anyway it had gone far enough. He'd finish it now. He had hardly hit Holliday at all; he'd hit him now. Where was he? He groped, and then he found him; found him by the simple process of noting from which quarter Holliday's last blow came. Right there in front of him, standing there and measuring him and driving it into his unprotected face.

It must look queer to the crowd, him not keeping his guard up or anything. They'd think he was letting Holliday knock him out. He'd better get it over with; he was consumed with eagerness, anyhow, to tell Hamilton and English the joke about the roof, the joke which was on himself.

So he swayed with the next blow and rocked lightly back. He'd sit down no more. He swayed with the next one, but this time he snapped forward, glove and arm and shoulder. This time, on the rebound, he put all he had into it; and that after all was what a champion really was: A guy who had something always left to call on, a guy who could shoot it all, when the crisis came.

And even Holliday must have been unwary and fooled and thought he was out standing up. For this time he did not miss. Nor did the floor rise. Nor Holliday. Tough on Holliday. Solved!

He allowed the referee to hold aloft his hand; good referee,—square. He fell out of the ring—clumsy!—and passed down miles and miles of aisle between pale faces. What were they goggling at? Of course he was a little cut up and bruised; what did they expect? He'd taken some punishment. They'd say now, he supposed, that he had no skill.

But they drew back and looked away, or dropped their eyes; they acted almost shamed. Well, some of them had been mistaken; they'd called him yellow. He wanted to stop and tell 'em it was not so, but he couldn't spare the time just now. He had to hurry to his dressing-room and tell Hamilton and English the joke,—this joke at his own expense.

English had an idea apparently that he was helping him, holding him up. Well, he wasn't. He'd bet it was fourteen feet from his neck to his ankles. But the joke—had they closed the door? Then listen!

"The roof! I thought it was the roof that fell on me! Can you beat that? First a brick roof—then a tin one—" He thought it was laughter which doubled him up.

"And do you know what it really was?" He gave them ample time but received no answer. So he shouted it aloud; he thought he shouted:

"Not the roof at all! Not brick—not even tin! Pots and pans! Pots and pans! Aluminum! Dozens! A whole set of 'em!"

He thought it was laughter which doubled him up; then found he was deathly sick. Was this the floor he was lying upon, or a table? Because if it was the floor he'd have to get up; he didn't know whether he could make it again or not but he'd be a game guy and try. They were holding him? All right, let it go at that. Holliday'd not got up either. He could see Holliday just as plain—just as clear!—unconscious on the canvas. Then the fight must be over—he was glad of that . . .

He came to crying weakly.



CHAPTER XII

WINNER TAKE ALL

His first conscious thought was of his great need to go to her quickly, yet he waited several days to give his marked face time to heal, Hamilton and Jack English waiting with him. And at length, on the way north, he shyly opened his heart to them; he told them of his plan. Because he was urgent about it, and more than a little panicky, they promised they would see him through with it; when they parted at Grand Central it was to be for only an hour or two.

"You'll not fail me?" he asked anxiously.

Hamilton made game of him, a little.

"We'll be there," he answered. "Where's your nerve, man? We'll be there with our hair in a braid."

"We'll be there," echoed English soberly. "We'll be in your corner."

He very nearly missed her; and yet afterward she always insisted that she was sure he would come, even in that last minute while she stood looking about to be certain that she had overlooked nothing in the apartment which she could no longer have afforded to keep even had she wanted to. Therefore her start at his appearance upon the threshold did not equal his surprise at the sight of her dressed for traveling, her belongings already packed.

For it fairly demoralized him. Like every good tactician he had coped with as many details as could be handled in advance, but against this moment his preparation had been none too thorough. Desperately, once or twice, he had tried to drill himself for it, practicing a line or two which he hoped he could remember.

"I'm not her kind; I'm different from what she is," he had told himself, "and I will tell her that. But I'll tell her, too, that I'll not stay different any longer than it can be helped. I am no dunce; I'll learn to be her kind."

But, slipping away too happily into thoughts of how different she was from everyone else in the whole world, beyond that he had not found it easy to go. None too steadily he had decided to rely upon inspiration. And now at the sight of her in a scant blue suit and tiny hat, bag in hand before him, every last syllable of his rehearsals basely failed him.

He looked from her inquiring eyes to the stripped room. She believed she understood that survey.

"Felicity's gone," she said in a voice that he hardly recognized as her own. "She went with Dunham, the afternoon of the day you left for the South. I did not tell you then because—"

It seemed too obvious, so she left it unsaid.

At that he reddened and was a little ashamed and humbler than ever at heart. But he'd not thought of Felicity for weeks; he'd never thought of her like this.

"Oh," was all he could manage. "Oh. And you—?"

She thought she understood his blankness.

"I was just going myself."

"Where?" He was suddenly afraid that it was too late for his plan,—that it had always been too late.

"I don't know," she answered. "Home, maybe—where I used to live. It doesn't much matter—anywhere."

Her eyes had not once left his face. And now he saw that they were as changed as her voice. He would have said, had they been other than hers, that they were bitter; no, not bitter; sardonic and mocking. Temporarily like Felicity's. And she must be very tired, judging from her voice, even more tired and wan than she looked.

The phrases which he had rehearsed deserted him treacherously.

"Then—then, why not come with me?" he labored over it. "I've a drawing-room on the Lake Shore on the five o'clock. I knew about Felicity; that wasn't why I came back. I came because I thought maybe we could go out—you and I—and look around together."

He knew it was a poor thing of weak words and not what his inarticulate heart would have uttered. Yet he was not prepared for her reception of it.

She laughed up into his face, a hard little, crisp little laugh.

"Why not?" she said. "Why not?"

And when he took her in his arms and kissed her it was not as he had dreamed it would be. Her body was slack, her lips not merely passive but cold against his own. His heart heavy for reasons which he could not name, he set her quickly free.

"I'll be back for you, then, at three," he said. "Will you be ready?"

As casually, it came to him, just as calmly he might have discussed his plan with any man.

"At three," she repeated. "I'll be ready."

He left her, not as happy as when he had sped up the stairs; left her demoralized now. In the interlude before his return she sat motionless, her mind a tumult of doubt.

She too had dreamed what that embrace would be; she had wanted always to be near him, yet she had just shrunk from it.

"Who am I to dictate such terms to life?" Felicity had demanded.

"And who was she," in all that long month Cecille had been asking of herself, "who was she? And what was she waiting for?"

Even a percentage of happiness, Felicity had preached, would be less unendurable than no happiness—ever—at all; and she had at last convinced herself that this was so. Yet now she shook with doubt. Was this dead thing the actuality which at any price she had hoped to save?

Once she was very close to flight; more than once, more childishly than she knew, she wished that she would die.

But she kept to her promise and waited; she was ready and went with him at three, though after he had put her in the taxi and climbed in beside her, she found it difficult to breathe. She could not have forced words from her throat had she wanted to, and he was as silent as she. For at the end of hours he had hit upon an explanation of this mood of hers, her trouble, and it was troubling him deeply, too. Two or three times, watching her still face and quiet hands, it had been upon the tip of his tongue to tell her that after all they could still abandon his plan.

He had not offered to kiss her again, nor even reached for her hand, and she had been grateful for this, almost hysterically grateful as she recalled the little opportunities which she had once contrived for just such contacts. And the taxi was not merely stifling; it was like a trap. The seat was far too narrow. Even though she huddled into her corner the six inches of clear space which separated them was all too brief.

So they rode south, both unhappier with every turn of the wheels, till suddenly he saw her hands tighten into fists, and her lips begin to move.

"I can't," was what he made of that whisper. "Oh, ask him to stop—please—please!"

He did not question her; her face was enough. The cab pulled up to the curb. She flung open the door and started to get out. But she could not go like this—not without a word—not without some explanation—even if she had to brave his rage.