The heat, the smoke, the stir, confused and bewildered her, but she liked the bewilderment. She was drunk with it--only this intense impatience for Beckett and Goddard to come was more than she could bear. "Oh, I do _wish_ they'd come.... I do _wish_ they'd come!" she sighed. Then, turning to "Tubby," she said: "Cheer up! What's the matter?"
"Oh, I'm all right." He moved uneasily. She fancied that he glanced with anger at a fat, black-haired, be-ringed man near him who, as she already noticed, stared at her.
"Oh, I _do_ wish they'd come!" she cried, speaking more loudly than she had intended. Some man near her heard her and laughed.
They came at last. The tall fellow was Goddard. The shorter man in the dull-coloured dressing-gown was Beckett. They walked about inside the ring; then they sat down and were hidden by a cloud of men with towels. A little man walked about the ring shouting something through a megaphone.
Lois could not hear what he said because of her own excitement. The ring was cleared; the fight had begun. The breathless silence that followed was almost more than she could bear. From the first moment she wanted Beckett to win. His grim seriousness fascinated her. The way that he stood crouching forward, his magnificent condition, the brown healthiness of his skin, appealed to her desperately. "I want him to win! I want him to win!" she repeated again and again to herself. He seemed to be having the best of it. Men shouted his name. The first round was over. In the pause of the interval she realised for a moment, as though she had come down from a great height, that the men near her were looking at her and smiling. She did not care; if only Beckett would win she cared for nothing. "The first round's Beckett's on points, anyway," she heard a man say near her. The ring was cleared again, the men moved cautiously, watching one another. Suddenly Beckett had sprung in. Before she could account to herself for what was happening Goddard was on the floor. Men rose in their seats, shouting. The referee could be seen counting the seconds. Goddard was up. Then Beckett was in to him again--right, left, tuned like a piece of music. Goddard was down again, and this time he lay his full length without moving. The vast building seemed to rise like the personification of one exultant man and shout. Lois herself had risen; she was crying she knew not what, waving her programme. A man had leaped forward and kissed Beckett. Goddard was dragged by his seconds like a sack to his chair. The roar continued; men shouted and yelled and cheered. Lois sat down. It was over; Beckett had won. She had had her desire. She felt as though she had walked for miles and miles through thick, difficult country.