“What is the use?” she asked. “Prize-fighting is prize-fighting, and we all know what it means. The fight did end in the round I told you it would.”
“It did,” he agreed. “But you didn’t know it would. In all the world you and I were at least two that knew Powers wouldn’t be knocked out in the sixteenth.”
She remained silent.
“I say you knew he wouldn’t.” He spoke peremptorily, and, when she still declined to speak, stepped nearer to her. “Answer me,” he commanded.
She nodded her head.
“But he was,” she insisted.
“He wasn’t. He wasn’t knocked out at all. Do you get that? I am going to tell you about it, and you are going to listen. I didn’t lie to you. Do you get that? I didn’t lie to you. I was a fool, and they fooled me, and you along with me. You thought you saw him knocked out. Yet the blow I struck was not heavy enough. It didn’t hit him in the right place either. He made believe it did. He faked that knockout.”
He paused and looked at her expectantly. And somehow, with a leap and thrill, she knew that she believed him, and she felt pervaded by a warm happiness at the reinstatement of this man who meant nothing to her and whom she had seen but twice in her life.
“Well?” he demanded, and she thrilled anew at the compellingness of him.
She stood up, and her hand went out to his.