Winner Take All

Abruptly she stopped.

"And I've been fighting ever since," she spoke in a less urgent fashion. "And I'm going to keep on fighting—right up to the end. But you—is that the kind of stuff they slipped you too, Cele?"

Cecille had been listening without a sound, her eyes clinging to Felicity's face, which was twisted, somewhat awry.

"Is that what they slipped you too?"

Cecille licked her lips. They were dry.

"I—I guess so."

"And that suits you? You think that's fair and square?"

"I don't know," Cecille whispered dully. "I don't know."

"Then it's time you found out," Felicity flung at her fiercely. "I had to. It was put up to me just as cold. I didn't want to, any more than you do. They aren't my rules; they're theirs! But I had to decide. And it's time you figured it out."

Again Cecille touched her lip with the tip of her tongue.

"I've been trying to," she faltered. "But I—it don't seem to me as though I want as much as you do. I'd be content with oh-so-little. With a home, and a—and a man from whom I didn't shrink when he touched me and—and—" She could go no further. That was too vivid, too intimate.

It was Felicity who displayed her feelings at the end. And already she was beginning to scorn herself for having paraded them.

"Oh-so-little!" she mocked. She did not mean to be derisive. "Just that! Just a home—just a man—a real man—content!"

"Would you be?" Cecille asked the question unaware of the other's irony.

"Say, who do you think I am," she asked, "to try to dictate terms like that to life? What do you think I am? A champion? Because that's what you're talking now. The whole purse—or nothing! I know my limits. I'm going to be glad to get a fair percentage split for my share. A home! A man! Content! I get you at last, Cecille. It's you who'd better come to. For whether you know it or not, you're talking winner—take—all!"

She rose then. She shrugged her arms and stretched them high above her head, and all visible emotion slipped from her like a discarded garment.

"And that's that!" she stated easily. She went back to the mirror and adjusted her veil. Then came a brief and awkward moment.

"Well, I guess I'll be going," she said. "The rent's paid a month in advance. Don't let that Shylock landlord gyp you."

"I won't," said Cecille.

"Well, I guess I'll be going." She picked up her bag. They did not kiss each other.

"Well—so-long."

"I—I wish you—" Cecille checked herself. She had been about to say I wish you happiness. She meant that, yet clumsily she changed it.

"I wish you luck."

At that Felicity paused.

"Does this hat look all right?"

Cecille nodded. And then she was gone.

So Felicity passes. No dark river. No swift oblivion. No agony of remorse. Those who may feel that her history is incomplete, that they have been robbed of their full meed of vindictive satisfaction, I must refer back to an earlier paragraph. And to those who may say, Here is a dangerous departure from the formula for such tales, there is only one honest retort. Felicity isn't a figment of fancy. Felicity's from the life.

Cecille sat quiet after Felicity had gone, until darkness crept into the room. She rose then, mechanically, and prepared and ate some supper. Later Perry Blair came and she found that pressing as her own problem seemed she could still think first of him. She would not tell him now of Felicity's dereliction. He needed a single mind to face his coming struggle. He would learn of it soon enough.

Later still they went out and walked, till he had only time enough left in which to catch his train. Both of them were silent. Neither felt any inclination to talk. But Cecille's brain had been as uncannily busy as that of one who lies awake throughout a white and sleepless night. And she had believed this bodiless activity to be the process of sound reasoning; she had found some security in the conclusions she had formed.

But when they turned back toward the apartment the whole brilliant structure proved treacherous. It toppled. She was back where she had started, cornered, driven now for time. She couldn't stand it. He would go—and he'd never come back. Never! What was there in it for her? What was she waiting for?

Play the game? Fight? She knew she wasn't clever like Felicity, but she conceived what she thought was a desperate expedient, nor realized that it was pitifully transparent. There was no elevator in their building. Perry had a habit of striking matches to light the darker portions of the stairs, though that was silly. She'd told him; she knew every step of the way. But to-night when he struck the first one, she raced ahead. When it flickered and suddenly went out, she crumpled. At her cry, which brought him swiftly, he found her a little heap upon the stair. Her ankle was doubled beneath her.

"I've twisted it," she said.

She wasn't clever, like Felicity, and yet how simple it was!

He picked her up. He carried her like no weight at all. And she lay very close against him, her head on his crooked elbow, her arms about his neck. They had left a light burning in the box of a sitting-room. And as he entered there Perry Blair, looking down at her delicately parted lips and faintly fatigue-penciled eyes, breathed deeply once, and smiled.

He'd been quickly skeptical; he was certain now. No one who had just twisted an ankle was content and serene as that.

And that was when Perry Blair first saw Cecille Manners—first saw her with seeing eyes. He looked down at her and in that instant learned how infinitely precious and flagrantly bold girlhood like hers could be.

He carried her to a couch. She lay quiet, her eyes still closed. But when, after a glance at his watch, he would have tried to ascertain the extent of the damage, which he knew was no damage at all, she sprang erect, and flamed at him, and struck his hands aside.

"No!" she gasped. "No!"

And then she put her hands upon her face.

"I didn't twist it." Her very voice was dreary. "I just couldn't face it, that was all. I thought maybe, if you carried me upstairs—if once you felt me in your arms—ugh!" She made a sound, a gesture as of nausea. And yet, after a moment, with surprising steadiness:

"Had you just as soon go now? I wish—I wish you'd go."

He gave her her wish so quietly that when she looked again she was surprised not to see him still there. In the lower hall he stopped a moment and stood with his head on one side as a man stands who listens. He made as if to climb the stairs again, and shook his head. Holliday came first, and he'd have to hurry.

In the box of a sitting-room above Cecille sat and also listened. But she made no move as if to follow. She just half stretched her arms toward the stairway when finally she knew that he was gone.

"Oh!" she cried then. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, God!"

CHAPTER XI

POTS AND PANS!

The rest tells more quickly by far.

A raised, roped platform—two lithe bodies—a pavilion of white faces. Not the first round, nor the second, nor the seventh. The intermission which followed it rather, and a crowd grown strangely silent.

Perry Blair went back to his seat at the clang of the bell. Jack English was in his corner, and Hamilton, for he had been unwilling to trust anyone else. And lying back under their hurried, efficient ministrations he looked out upon the banks of faces.

They were tense; it was easy to see that, just as it was easy to sense that theirs was no ordinary tension. And he understood what it meant. Word had seeped from tier to tier, spread like a drop of ink in a glass of water, until it had colored the entire mass. Only a very select few were "in the know" of what that eighth round had been planned to develop, yet they somehow had leavened the whole audience with anticipation, by an indefinite word or two.