ut her hands upon her face.

"I didn't twist it." Her very voice was dreary. "I just couldn't face
it, that was all. I thought maybe, if you carried me upstairs--if once
you felt me in your arms--ugh!" She made a sound, a gesture as of
nausea. And yet, after a moment, with surprising steadiness:

"Had you just as soon go now? I wish--I wish you'd go."

He gave her her wish so quietly that when she looked again she was
surprised not to see him still there. In the lower hall he stopped a
moment and stood with his head on one side as a man stands who listens.
He made as if to climb the stairs again, and shook his head. Holliday
came first, and he'd have to hurry.

In the box of a sitting-room above Cecille sat and also listened. But
she made no move as if to follow. She just half stretched her arms
toward the stairway when finally she knew that he was gone.

"Oh!" she cried then. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, God!"

CHAPTER XI

POTS AND PANS!

The rest tells more quickly by far.

A raised, roped platform--two lithe bodies--a pavilion of white faces.
Not the first round, nor the second, nor the seventh. The intermission
which followed it rather, and a crowd grown strangely silent.

Perry Blair went back to his seat at the clang of the bell. Jack English
was in his corner, and Hamilton, for he had been unwilling to trust
anyone else. And lying back under their hurried, efficient ministrations
he looked out upon the banks of faces.

They were tense; it was easy to see that, just as it was easy to sense
that theirs was no ordinary tension. And he understood what it meant.
Word had seeped from tier to tier, spread like a drop of ink in a glass
of water, until it had colored the entire mass. Only a very select few
were "in the know" of what that eighth round had been planned to develop,
yet they somehow had leavened the whole audience with anticipation, by an
indefinite word or two.

"The eighth," they were whispering among themselves. "Watch this now;
here's where something happens!"

They had hooted Perry as he entered the ring; saluted him with catcalls
and a few out-and-out hisses. He'd wondered then if any other champion
had ever been saluted in just that fashion before; he'd tried to smile.
He wasn't trying any more.

But Holliday was. Across in his corner Holliday was nodding to his
handlers and grinning widely, just as he had grinned all through the
fight so far. And so far it had