d-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