"And if she knocked a thousand times in succession, everybody'd be a millionaire," Johnson Boller suggested.
"Something like that," smiled Anthony. "The chap who does know opportunity, recognizes her mainly by accident, I honestly believe. Now, if we could but take each man and place opportunity before him and hold her there until he fully understood that she was present, the word failure would be omitted from the dictionaries a generation hence."
Anthony Fry winked rapidly, which in itself was rather a bad sign because it indicated that the theorizing portion of his cultured brain was growing quite rapt. At another time, very likely, Johnson Boller would have heeded the warning and turned Anthony's attention gently back to the fight; but to-night Boller sought refuge from the haunting loneliness that Beatrice had left behind.
"I don't agree with you!" he said flatly.
"Eh?"
"Nix!" said Johnson Boller. "Any guy who can come face to face with a regular honest-to-goodness opportunity, Anthony, and not know her inside of one second, could have her tied to his right leg for two hundred years and never know she was there."
"You really believe that?"
"Oh, I know it!" said Johnson Boller. "I have several millions of years of human experience to prove that I'm right."
Anthony leaned closer, causing the largest of the red-faced trio behind to growl senselessly as he was forced to shift for a view of the ring.
"Let us assume, Johnson, the individual A," said Anthony. "A wished to become a lawyer; he had his chance and missed it. We will assume him to be peculiarly stupid; we will say that he had opportunity for the second time—and again failed to grasp her. Can you think that, deliberately led up to his third opportunity of becoming a lawyer, A will turn his back for the third time?"