A bell clanged twice and his brain cleared.  He saw the scurry of uniformed figures to the field, the catcher adjusted his mask.  The Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known stood nonchalantly in the box, stooped for a handful of earth and with it polluted the fair surface of a new ball.  A second later the ball shot over the plate.  The batter fanned, the crowd yelled.

All at once Bean was coldly himself.  He knew that Breede sat at his right; that on his left was a peculiar young woman.  He promptly forgot their identities, and his own as well, and recalled them but seldom during the ensuing game.

It is a phenomenon familiar to most of us.  The sons of men, under the magic of that living diamond, are no longer little units of souls jealously on guard.  Heart speaks to heart naked and unashamed; they fraternize across deeps that are commonly impassable, thrilling as one man to the genius of the double-play, or with one voice hurling merited insults at a remote and contemptuous umpire.  It is only there, on earth, that they love their neighbour.  There they are fused, and welded into that perfect whole which is perhaps the only colourable imitation ever to be had on earth of the democracy said to prevail in Heaven.

There was no longer a Bean, a Breede, a flapper.  Instead were three merged souls in three volatile bodies, three voices that blended in cheers or execration.  At any crisis they instinctively laid gripping hands upon each other and, half-rising, with distended eyes and tense half-voices, besought some panting runner to “Come on!  Come on, you!  Oh, come on!” There were other moments of supreme joy when they were blown to their feet and backs were impartially pounded.  More than once they might have been observed, with brandishing fists, shouting, “Robber!  Robber! Robber!!!” at the unperturbed man behind the plate who merely looked at an indicator in his hand and resumed his professional crouch quite as if nothing had happened.

And there were moments of snappy, broken talk, comments on individual players, a raking over the records.  It was not Breede who talked to Bean then.  It was one freed soul communicating with another.  He none too gently put Breede right in the matter of Wagner’s batting average for the previous year and the price that had been paid for the new infielder.  And Breede in spirit sat meekly at his feet, grateful for his lore.

Of an absent player, Breede said he was too old—­all of thirty-five.  He’d never come back.

“They come back when they learn to play ball above the ears,” retorted Bean with crisp sapience.  “How about old Cy Young?  How about old Callahan of the Sox?  How about Wagner out there—­think he’s only nineteen—­hey?  Tell me that!”

He looked pityingly at the man of millions thus silenced.

Two men scored from third and second, thanks to a wild throw.

“Inside play, there?” said Breede.