uthed fear for his sanity.

"Hello, Pops!" said the flapper.

"'Lo, Sis! What time's 'at game called?"

"Three," said Bean, still alarmed.

Breede looked at his watch.

"Jus' got time to make it."

He arose from the desk. Bean arose. The flapper arose.

"Take y' up in car," said Breede, most amazingly.

Bean pulled his collar from about his suddenly constricted throat.

"Letters!" He pointed to the note-book.

"Have 'em ready Monday noon. C'mon! Two-thirty now."

The early hour was as incredible as this social phenomenon.

"Daughter!" said Breede, with half a glance at the flapper, and deeming
that he had performed a familiar social rite.

"Pleased to meet you!" said Bean, dazedly. The flapper jerked her head
in a double nod.

Of the interval that must have elapsed before he found himself seated in
the grandstand between Breede and the flapper he was able to recall but
little. It was as if a dense fog shut him in. Once it lifted and he
suffered a vision of himself in a swiftly propelled motor-car, beside an
absorbed mechanician. He half turned in his seat and met the cool,
steady gaze of the flapper; she smiled, but quickly checked herself to
resume the stare; he was aware that Breede was at her side. And the fog
closed in again. It was too unbelievable.

A bell clanged twice and his brain cleared. He saw the scurry of
uniformed figures to the field, the catcher adjusted his mask. The
Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known stood nonchalantly in the box,
stooped for a handful of earth and with it polluted the fair surface of
a new ball. A second later the ball shot over the plate. The batter
fanned, the crowd yelled.

All at once Bean was coldly himself. He knew that Breede sat at his
right; that on his left was a peculiar young woman. He promptly forgot
their identities, and his own as well, and recalled them but seldom
during the ensuing game.

It is a phenomenon familiar to most of us. The sons of men, under the
magic of that living diamond, are no longer little units of souls
jealously on guard. Heart speaks to heart naked and unashamed; they
fraternize across deeps that are commonly impassable, thrilling as one
man to the genius of the double-play, or with one voice hurling merited
insults at a remote and contemptuous umpire. It is only there, on earth,
that they love their neighbour. There they are fused, and welded into
that perfect whole which is perhaps the only colourable imitation ever