hand.

"Gentlemen will please stop smoking," he said.

His effort was applauded by groans and cat-calls, and she noticed with
indignation that nobody stopped smoking. Mr. Clausen held a burning
match in his fingers while the announcement was being made, and then
calmly lighted his cigar. She felt that she hated him in that moment.
How was her Joe to fight in such an atmosphere? She could scarcely
breathe herself, and she was only sitting down.

The announcer came over to Joe. He stood up. His bath robe fell away
from him, and he stepped forth to the centre of the ring, naked save for
the low canvas shoes and a narrow hip-cloth of white. Genevieve's eyes
dropped. She sat alone, with none to see, but her face was burning with
shame at sight of the beautiful nakedness of her lover. But she looked
again, guiltily, for the joy that was hers in beholding what she knew
must be sinful to behold. The leap of something within her and the stir
of her being toward him must be sinful. But it was delicious sin, and
she did not deny her eyes. In vain Mrs. Grundy admonished her. The
pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of
all the past were whispering through her, and there was a clamour of the
children unborn. But of this she knew nothing. She knew only that it
was sin, and she lifted her head proudly, recklessly resolved, in one
great surge of revolt, to sin to the uttermost.

She had never dreamed of the form under the clothes. The form, beyond
the hands and the face, had no part in her mental processes. A child of
garmented civilization, the garment was to her the form. The race of men
was to her a race of garmented bipeds, with hands and faces and