“She pushed me away from her, and looked up into my face in a frightened way and said:  ‘Do you mean to be your wife?’

“‘I do,’ I said, and then because I was afraid that she didn’t trust in me enough yet to marry me I said solemnly:  ’Fanny Montrose, you need have no fear.  If I’ve been drunk and riotous, it’s because I wanted to be, and now that I’ve made up my mind to be straight, there isn’t a thing living that could turn me back again.  Fanny Montrose, will you say you’ll be my wife?’

“Then she put out her two hands to me and tumbled into my arms, all limp.”

II

Larry Moore rose and walked the length of the room.  When he came back he went to the wall and took down a photograph; but with what emotion I could not say, for his back was to me.  I glanced again at the odd volatile beauty in the woman’s face and wondered what was the word Bill Coogan had said and what was his reason for saying it.

“From that day it was all luck for me,” Larry Moore said, settling again in the chair, where his face returned to the shadow.  “She had a head on her, that little woman.  She pulled me up to where I am.  I pitched that season for the Bridgeports.  You know the record, Bob, seven games lost out of forty-three, and not so much my fault either.  When they were for signing me again, at big money too, the little woman said: 

“’Don’t you do it, Larry Moore; they’re not your class.  Just hold out a bit.’

“You know, Bob, how I signed then with the Giants, and how they boosted my salary at the end of that first year; but it was Fanny Montrose who made the contracts every time.  We had the child then, and I was happy.  The money came quick, and lots of it, and I put it in her lap and said: 

“‘Do what you want with it; only I want you to enjoy it like a lady.’

“Maybe I was wrong there—­maybe I was.  It was pride, I’ll admit; but there wasn’t a lady came to the stands that looked finer than Fanny Montrose, as I always used to call her.  I got to be something of a figure, as you know, and the little woman was always riding back and forth to the games in some automobile, and more often with Paul Bargee.

“One afternoon Ed Nichols, who was catching me then, came up with a serious face and said:  ’Where’s your lady to-day, Larry—­and Paul Bargee?’ And by the way he said it I knew what he had in mind, and good friend that he was of mine I liked to have throttled him.  They told me to pitch the game, and I did.  I won it too.  Then I ran home without changing my clothes, the people staring at me, and ran up the stairs and flung open the door and stopped and called:  ‘Fanny Montrose!’

“And I called again, and I called a third time, and only the child came to answer me.  Then I knew in my heart that Fanny Montrose had left me and run off with Paul Bargee.

III