The Game | Page 9

a devotee. She was a being wholly different from
any he had ever known. She was not as other girls. It never entered his
head that she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's
sister. She was more than mere girl, than mere woman. She was--well,
she was Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing less than a
miracle of creation.
And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion. Her
judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his judgment
of her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at all); but in her
judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the parts, and knew
him only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to life, and for
whom she could die as willingly as she could live. She often beguiled
her waking dreams of him with fancied situations, wherein, dying for
him, she at last adequately expressed the love she felt for him, and
which, living, she knew she could never fully express.
Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into it,

for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of their
relation were something which they never considered. Yet the
immediate physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and
raptures of the flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the
momentary pressure of a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the
tingling thrill of her hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly thrusting
back the locks from above his eyes. All this they knew, but also, and
they knew not why, there seemed a hint of sin about these caresses and
sweet bodily contacts.
There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him
in a very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained her.
At such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of some
unguessed sin that lurked within her. It was wrong, undoubtedly wrong,
that she should wish to caress her lover in so unbecoming a fashion. No
self-respecting girl could dream of doing such a thing. It was
unwomanly. Besides, if she had done it, what would he have thought of
it? And while she contemplated so horrible a catastrophe, she seemed
to shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret shame.
Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which,
perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long and
tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her
waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till
she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his nature to wish to hurt
any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any
blow he struck. In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the
Game was to down an antagonist and keep that antagonist down for a
space of ten seconds. So he never struck merely to hurt; the hurt was
incidental to the end, and the end was quite another matter. And yet
here, with this girl he loved, came the desire to hurt. Why, when with
thumb and forefinger he had ringed her wrist, he should desire to
contract that ring till it crushed, was beyond him. He could not
understand, and felt that he was discovering depths of brutality in his
nature of which he had never dreamed.
Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her

against him. Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to his
senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still trembling
with a vague and nameless delight. And she, too, was trembling. In the
hurt itself, which was the essence of the vigorous embrace, she had
found delight; and again she knew sin, though she knew not its nature
nor why it should be sin.
Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein
chanced upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes. Came
likewise the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal feelings
of Mrs. Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all prize-fighters and
against Joe Fleming in particular. Vainly had Silverstein striven to stay
the spouse's wrath. There was need for her wrath. All the maternal
feelings were hers but none of the maternal rights.
Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse
was pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to
hear the details of the abuse. Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the
prize-fighter. It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be
believable. Her