ly--as far as I can make out they mean
business."

"What are they going to do?"

He answered her question by putting another. "You know I told you
I belonged to the National Sporting?"

"Are they going to fight?" She caught her breath, forcing back the
sense of nausea.

"Yes; bare fists with a definite end in view. Why look here--" He
took her arm and gently pulled her to the window where he was standing.
"Look here, you see they've even got assistants--those two chaps with
towels over their arms. The men are over in that shed--stripping,
I suppose. By Jove, if I had thought of an entertainment, I couldn't
have got anything more exciting than this for you. Ever seen a fight?"

"No." The word struggled through cold lips.

"P'raps you'd rather not look at this? Don't you hesitate to say so
if you think it'll be disgusting."

She caught the note of disappointment. There was no mistaking it.
In this moment of excitement, he had become a child--scarce content
with seeing the passing show himself, but must drag others with him
to share his delight and thereby intensify it.

"I can easily go away if I don't like it," she said.

"Yes--of course you can--of course you can. But you ought just to
see the beginning, you ought to really. They'll be as quaint as two
waltzing Japanese mice. All these preparations will put them right
off at first. They'll be funked utterly and look as if they were
trying to break bubbles, then they'll warm up a bit. You should see
the novices at the National Sporting on Thursday afternoon. They make
the whole house roar with laughter. Talk about Don Quixote and the
windmills! You must just see the beginning!"

How could she disappoint or refuse him, though the prospect was a
moving horror in her mind? She could close her eyes. He had called
her. He wanted her to see it with him. How could she refuse, lessen
herself perhaps in his opinion? She leant out upon the window-sill
and looked bravely below. Their shoulders were touching--she found
even consolation and assistance in that.

"Do you think it'll be long?" she asked in a low voice.

"Don't know; it all depends. I hope it won't be too short. Sure you
don't mind?"

She was possessed of that same motive which induces a woman to make
light, to make nothing of her pain and her suffering to the man she
loves. In such moments--loving deeply--she looks upon it, speaks of
it, as a visitation of which she is ashamed. Begs him to forgive her