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way and Jimmy no longer bound by any obligations, for he realized that for some
reason Brophy had just gone a little too far with his rough tactics, there having
been in the arrangement with the sparring partners an understanding that when
a knock-down was to be staged Brophy was to give his opponent the cue. No cue
had been given, however. Jimmy had not been expecting it, and he had been
floored with a punch behind which were all the weight and brawn of the pugilist.
He had long since ceased to consider what the spectators might think. So far as
Jimmy was concerned, they might have been so many chairs. He was merely
angry at the unnecessary punishment that had been inflicted. As he sprawled in
his corner he let his eyes run over the faces of the spectators directly in front of
him, to whom previously he had paid no particular attention, and even now it
was scarcely more than an involuntary glance; but his eyes stopped suddenly
upon a face, and as recognition suddenly dawned upon him he could feel the hot
blood rushing to his own. For there was the girl whom Fate had thrice before
thrown in his path! Beside her he recognized the Miss Harriet Holden who had
been with her the night at Feinheimer's, and with them were two young men.
Something within Jimmy Torrance rebelled to a point where it utterly dominated
him--rebelled at the thought that this girl, whom he had unconsciously set upon
a pedestal to worship from afar, should always find him in some menial and
humiliating position. It was bad enough that she should see him as a sparring
partner of a professional pug, but it made it infinitely worse that she should see
him as what he must appear, an unsuccessful third or fourth rate fighter.
Everything within Jimmy's mind turned suddenly topsyturvy. He seemed to lose
all sense of proportion and all sense of value in one overpowering thought, that
he must not again be humiliated in her presence.
And so it was that at the tap of the gong for the third round it was not Torrance
the sparring partner that advanced from his corner, but Jimmy Torrance,
champion heavyweight boxer of a certain famous university. But why enter into
the harrowing details of the ensuing minute and a half?
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