The Game | Page 6

"I--I'd like to," she said hastily with an effort, striving after that
sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads to
women's breasts.
"Will you?"
Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers. He meant it--she knew that.
It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love.
"It would be the proudest moment of my life," he said simply.
It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his
need for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face for
wisdom's sake,--and it may have been the clarion call of adventure
ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful existence; for a great
daring thrilled through her, and she said, just as simply, "I will."
"I didn't think you would, or I wouldn't have asked," he confessed, as
they walked out to the sidewalk.
"But can't it be done?" she asked anxiously, before her resolution could
cool.
"Oh, I can fix that; but I didn't think you would."
"I didn't think you would," he repeated, still amazed, as he helped her
upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare.
CHAPTER II

Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment

made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept
themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a
regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held them
aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily; nor had
either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart- companion with
whom to chum and have things in common. The social instinct was
strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because they could not
satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy their desire for
cleanness and decency.
If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness
without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been
peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon
whom she attended, she had not joined in the street games and frolics
of the children of the neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered,
narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk, domestic because of his inherent
disability to mix with men, had done his full share toward giving the
home an atmosphere of sweetness and tenderness.
An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business
themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round.
And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped
by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no girl chum
for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared. Nor did she choose
to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the
custom of girls from their fifteenth year. "That stuck-up doll-face," was
the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she
earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less
commanded their respect. "Peaches and cream," she was called by the

young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were
afraid of arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of
Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously
beautiful and unapproachable.
For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and
environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a
beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to
earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a beauty
in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a
beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded.
Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack
of dress, and but befitted her beauty and dignity with anything she put
on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine, tender and soft and clinging, with
the smouldering passion of the mate and the motherliness of the woman.
But this side of her nature had lain dormant through the years, waiting
for the mate to appear.
Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to
cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed