Her face was calm ivory and her lips tinted. It was a vastly different Babe from the shop worn girl who on the occasion of Bearcat’s first fight in Harlem had been the center of jeering attention and cheap wise-cracks. This was a transformed Babe with a poise and assurance discovering a place in the social register. The old timers kept quiet. Her appearance awed them. She was some Tammany politician’s woman, they surmised, far too high socially to be kidded in public.

Bearcat received an ovation as he slipped through the ropes, electrical energy in white insulation. Babe looked at him with the satisfaction of a trapper exhibiting a captured animal. Triumph over this man gave a conquering sparkle to her eye. She watched the Bearcat with the consuming pride of possession.

The crowd was on hair-trigger excitement. It was an even money bet as to the winner. Harlem had dug up its last dollar to back its favorite. Seconds were rubbing up circulation over the Bearcat’s body. Determination, calm courage and smiling bravery radiated from him. Joe Hastings, none the less calm and confident, appeared if anything more formidable as he slipped off his purple bathrobe.

He was a glamorous Negro with a yellow-black body, fully developed calves and thighs, long gangling arms and an almost femininely slender torso. His road to successive victories was by way of his long reach, piston like blows and punch proof head. He moved like a panther and had endeared himself to colored worship by a famous watermelon grin.

The two contrasting bodies came to the ring center, clasped gloves and received final instructions. The human throng pulled up taut and tense, to feast upon this supreme battle of black and white. The gong rang!

The two bodies rushed at each other and became a whirlpool of stabbing, slashing arms, swirling like angry foam in a boiling rapids, now white, now muddy black—a gush of red blood in the foam—the white form of Bearcat sank to the canvas. The jungle wrenched up from the arena in a screaming howl.

“You got him, black boy!”

“Kill him!”

“Keep him down!”

“He’s ready for the cooler!”

The arm of the referee began tolling off the count.

Charlie Yates turned one sick look at Babe, smiling coldly at the misfortune before her, her eyes as indifferent as if she were viewing a strange corpse. Then at the count of nine a lightning bolt of white shot up from the canvas and sped into the black body. It sagged, cracking like a stick of charcoal to the platform. A mad delirium of cheering rocked the arena, and waves of tensioned talk rose like a tide over the tiers, as the bell clanged, ending the round and saving Harlem Joe from being counted out.

Friends were pounding the bewildered Charlie on the back and shoulders. Babe sat quiet and studied the Bearcat with searching attention.

The bell sounded for round two.