The Game | Page 4

It was a man's face she
saw, a face of steel, tense and immobile; a mouth of steel, the lips like
the jaws of a trap; eyes of steel, dilated, intent, and the light in them
and the glitter were the light and glitter of steel. The face of a man, and
she had known only his boy face. This face she did not know at all.
And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in
him. His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its
inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek
out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength.
She did not understand this force of his being that rose mightier than
her love and laid its compulsion upon him; and yet, in her woman's
heart she was aware of the sweet pang which told her that for her sake,
for Love's own sake, he had surrendered to her, abandoned all that
portion of his life, and with this one last fight would never fight again.

"Mrs. Silverstein doesn't like prize-fighting," she said. "She's down on
it, and she knows something, too."
He smiled indulgently, concealing a hurt, not altogether new, at her
persistent inappreciation of this side of his nature and life in which he
took the greatest pride. It was to him power and achievement, earned
by his own effort and hard work; and in the moment when he had
offered himself and all that he was to Genevieve, it was this, and this
alone, that he was proudly conscious of laying at her feet. It was the
merit of work performed, a guerdon of manhood finer and greater than
any other man could offer, and it had been to him his justification and
right to possess her. And she had not understood it then, as she did not
understand it now, and he might well have wondered what else she
found in him to make him worthy.
"Mrs. Silverstein is a dub, and a softy, and a knocker," he said
good-humoredly. "What's she know about such things, anyway? I tell
you it IS good, and healthy, too,"--this last as an afterthought. "Look at
me. I tell you I have to live clean to be in condition like this. I live
cleaner than she does, or her old man, or anybody you know--baths,
rub-downs, exercise, regular hours, good food and no makin' a pig of
myself, no drinking, no smoking, nothing that'll hurt me. Why, I live
cleaner than you, Genevieve--"
"Honest, I do," he hastened to add at sight of her shocked face. "I don't
mean water an' soap, but look there." His hand closed reverently but
firmly on her arm. "Soft, you're all soft, all over. Not like mine. Here,
feel this."
He pressed the ends of her fingers into his hard arm-muscles until she
winced from the hurt.
"Hard all over just like that," he went on. "Now that's what I call clean.
Every bit of flesh an' blood an' muscle is clean right down to the
bones--and they're clean, too. No soap and water only on the skin, but
clean all the way in. I tell you it feels clean. It knows it's clean itself.
When I wake up in the morning an' go to work, every drop of blood and
bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean. Oh, I tell you--"

He paused with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted
flow of speech. Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance,
and never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred. For it was the
Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself,
the biggest thing in the world--or what had been the biggest thing in the
world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in
Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in
his life, overshadowing all other things. He was beginning to see,
though vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between
a man's work in the world and woman's need of the man. But he was
not capable of generalization. He saw only the antagonism between the
concrete, flesh-and-blood Genevieve and the great, abstract, living
Game. Each resented the other, each claimed him; he was torn with the
strife, and yet drifted helpless on the currents of their contention.
His words had drawn Genevieve's gaze to his face, and she had
pleasured in the clear skin, the clear eyes, the cheek soft and smooth as
a girl's. She saw the force of his argument and disliked it accordingly.
She revolted instinctively against this Game which drew him away
from her, robbed her of part