“There’s not much style about them,” muttered Traill.  He was leaning far out now, his elbows on the window-sill, his hands supporting his face—­the attitude of concentrated interest.  “You’ll see, they’ll go on dancing round each other like this for the whole of the first round.  Just what I said—­Japanese dancing mice.”

So they sidled, ridiculous to see, had it not been in such vivid earnest.  Now one feinted a blow, then the next.  At each lurching attempt Sally caught the breath in her throat.  It freed itself automatically with the lack of tension.

At last in a moment of over-balance—­a blow from one of them that struck air and pitched the striker forward—­they rushed together, each grunting like swine as the breath was driven out of them.  Sally clutched the curtain at her side.  Her fingers tore at the fabric.

“Break away, break away!” called the master; and when neither of them loosed his hold for fear the other would strike, he took him whom they called Jim by the shoulder and pushed him bodily backwards.  The other followed him with a blow like the arm of a windmill in a gale.  Traill chuckled with delight between his hands.

“Time!” called the master, and Jim, striking a futile blow that glanced harmlessly off the shoulder of his opponent, at which the little ring sent up its titter of laughter, they returned to their attendants.

Traill looked round.  “What I said, you see,” he remarked; “not one blow went home in the first round.  Yet they’re fanning them with towels—­ridiculous, isn’t it?” In the excitement of his interest, he spoke to her as though she were as well acquainted with the manners of the ring as he.

Once more they were called into the open.  Once more they slouched forward with the advice that their backers had poured into their ears still gyrating in a wild confusion in their minds.  That one minute had seemed interminable to Sally; yet she realized how small a speck of time it must have appeared to them.

“Do you think they’ll hit each other this time?” she whispered.

“Well, let’s hope so,” said Traill.  “It’s pretty dull as it is.  There isn’t much sport in this sort of thing if you can’t hit straight.  Oh, one of them’ll land a blow presently.  They want warming, that’s all.”

His words sounded far away but absolutely distinct.  She scarcely recognized in them the man whom she had been talking to but half an hour before.  His whole expression of speech was different.  The lust of this spirit of animalism was uppermost.  He was a different being; yet still she clung to him.  “There’s a beast in every man, thank God!” Just those few words chased in circles through her brain.  They had meant nothing to her; she had barely understood them before.  Now they lived with reality, and so deeply had his influence penetrated into the very heart of her desire, that she knew she would not have had him different.