but clean all the way in. I tell you it feels clean. It knows it's
clean itself. When I wake up in the morning an' go to work, every drop
of blood and bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean. Oh, I
tell you--"

He paused with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted flow
of speech. Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance, and
never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred. For it was the
Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself, the
biggest thing in the world--or what had been the biggest thing in the
world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in
Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his
life, overshadowing all other things. He was beginning to see, though
vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between a man's
work in the world and woman's need of the man. But he was not capable of
generalization. He saw only the antagonism between the concrete, flesh-
and-blood Genevieve and the great, abstract, living Game. Each resented
the other, each claimed him; he was torn with the strife, and yet drifted
helpless on the currents of their contention.

His words had drawn Genevieve's gaze to his face, and she had pleasured
in the clear skin, the clear eyes, the cheek soft and smooth as a girl's.
She saw the force of his argument and disliked it accordingly. She
revolted instinctively against this Game which drew him away from her,
robbed her of part of him. It was a rival she did not understand. Nor
could she understand its seductions. Had it been a woman rival, another
girl, knowledge and light and sight would have been hers. As it was, she
grappled in the dark with an intangible adversary about which she knew
nothing. What truth she felt in his speech made the Game but the more
formidable.