She found herself an hour later in a huge light room, with a floor like a dance hall and much strange paraphernalia against the walls. Little of it she was able to identify, though she took it all in with alert and eager eyes. This was the chiefest part of his life, so she must not even seem to slight it. The Indian clubs and dumb-bells—but they were easy. And the roped-off square at one end. That was the ring.
She found herself alone for a while, and was thrilled and excited and very happy. And then a quiet man who was, she guessed correctly, English's trainer came briskly toward her.
"You needn't be afraid." So Perry had assured her.
Surely not if this man's bearing was any criterion. He brought her a chair.
"Thank you." Her voice sounded small in that high-ceiled room. He only bowed in reply and went quietly away.
And then the next time she looked up it was to find Perry standing there beside her—a different Perry—a pagan Perry, stripped of all save trunks and shoes, yet unconscious of his nakedness.
"I'm not afraid," she'd told him. "It's not that."
Now she knew why she had hesitated about coming. And she was sorry, and breathlessly glad.
A pagan Perry, and one more beautiful than she otherwise could ever have dreamed. And yet, after the first startled glance, while she still dropped her head and put palms to her cheeks to hide a furious color, his lack of self-consciousness dismayed her, until it occurred to her that these were his working clothes—casual, ordinary. And with that a queer thought, seemingly unrelated, flashed through her head. She remembered that women almost never went to prize-fights—it was a man's sport—and she was jealously glad over that.
It shamed her. But she looked again. And again. And sudden rebellion at that shame led her to a wholly spontaneous, wholly unconsidered act. Perry was deep in abstraction. She knew what he was brooding over. That made her rebellious, too. Suddenly she reached out and laid her hand upon his bare shoulder.