Another uproar heralded the arrival of Glendon, and she watched him
eagerly as he went through the ropes to his corner. But it was not
until the tedious time of announcements, introductions, and challenges
was over, that the two men threw off their wraps and faced each other
in ring costume. Concentrated upon them from overhead was the white
glare of many electric lights--this for the benefit of the moving
picture cameras; and she felt, as she looked at the two sharply
contrasted men, that it was in Glendon that she saw the thoroughbred
and in Powers the abysmal brute. Both looked their parts--Glendon,
clean cut in face and form, softly and massively beautiful, Powers
almost asymmetrically rugged and heavily matted with hair.
As they made their preliminary pose for the cameras, confronting
each other in fighting attitudes, it chanced that Glendon's gaze
dropped down through the ropes and rested on her face. Though he
gave no sign, she knew, with a swift leap of the heart, that he had
recognized her. The next moment the gong sounded, the announcer cried
"Let her go!" and the battle was on.
It was a good fight. There was no blood, no marring, and both were
clever. Half of the first round was spent in feeling each other out,
but Maud Sangster found the play and feint and tap of the gloves
sufficiently exciting. During some of the fiercer rallies in later
stages of the fight, the editor was compelled to touch her arm to
remind her who she was and where she was.
Powers fought easily and cleanly, as became the hero of half a
hundred ring battles, and an admiring claque applauded his every
cleverness. Yet he did not unduly exert himself save in occasional
strenuous rallies that brought the audience yelling to its feet in
the mistaken notion that he was getting his man.
It was at such a moment, when her unpractised eye could not inform
her that Glendon was escaping serious damage, that the editor leaned
to her and said:
"Young Pat will win all right. He's a comer, and they can't stop
him. But he'll win in the sixteenth and not before."
"Or after?" she asked.
She almost laughed at the certitude of her companion's negative. She
knew better.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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