Page:Wilson - Bunker bean.djvu/99

Rh 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 unshamed; 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