h lamplight. And again, mood and
spirits rose in her. The event whose swift, kaleidoscopic action still
danced on her retina, the very stimulus of brutal youth in action, had
conspired with the perfect night to raise her above herself.

"Oh, talk to me about it!" she said. "How did you do it--what do you
call it--I want to hear _you_ tell about it."

"I guess you saw it all--just a plain uppercut. Those blame city
crowds would see a man killed before they'd think of anything but the
show. I've always said that, and now I know it. I caught sight of the
old man side-on and I saw he was hurt by something more than a punch.
Far be it from me to spoil a good scrap, but that wasn't a fair shake.
So I dropped you and started in. And then I saw that nail. I made a
slip there," he let his voice fall in self-depreciation--"I should
have kicked that chunk of board away, instead of diving for it. He
beat me to it. The rest was so easy it was a shame to take the money.
Up comes his head and up comes my guard"--he stopped in the street to
illustrate--"and he couldn't use his club any more than a kitten. I'd
have let him go, if he hadn't hit at me--and clipped me. For a second,
I could have bit nails in two. When I pulled myself in close, there
was his chin just above me--a be-auty target. And an uppercut was his
medicine." Bertram jerked his right hand up from his hip to illustrate
the uppercut. Then he screwed up his face and felt of his right
shoulder. "He marked me some," he said in explanation.

"Did he hurt you?" she asked with real concern. It ran into her mind
that the conventional hero of romance makes his wound a scratch before
his lady. If she expected that from Bertram Chester, he
disillusionized her.

"Well, you don't take a punch like that, even glancing on your
shoulder, without something getting loose," he replied. "I shouldn't
be surprised if I'd slipped a cog or a tendon or something."

"Why--let's go home and see about it."

"Oh, it isn't bad enough for that!" Then he fell into reminiscences.
In their toilsome passage up the hen-coop sidewalks of Broadway, he
gesticulated--with constrained motions of his right arm--loosed the
sparkle of his energetic, magnetic talk upon her. She drew close to
him. Gradually, as the steps became steep, her hand slipped under his
arm. She was only half-conscious of this motion; her consciousness was
full of a softening toward him, a leaning upon that strength which she
had seen