Harriet appeared startled then gasped, hiding it like a cough behind her tense fist, and vigorously applauded, her bracelets bouncing on her wrists. “Bravo, Roy, how wonderful.”

“What I mean,” he insisted, “is I feel that I have got it in me — that I am due for something very big. I have to do it. I mean,” he said modestly, “that’s of course when I get in the game.”

Her mouth opened. “You mean you’re not —” She seemed, to his surprise, disappointed, almost on the verge of crying.

“No,” he said, ashamed. “Sam’s taking me for a tryout.” Her eyes grew vacant as she stared out the window. Then she asked, “But Walter — he is a successful professional player, isn’t he?”

“The Whammer?” Roy nodded.

“And he has won that award three times — what was it?”

“The Most Valuable Player.” He had a panicky feeling he was losing her to the Whammer.

She bit her lip. “Yet you defeated him,” she murmured. He admitted it. “He won’t last much longer I don’t think-the most a year or two. By then he’ll be too old for the game. Myself, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”

Harriet brightened, saying sympathetically, “What will you hope to accomplish, Roy?”

He had already told her but after a minute remarked, “Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people will say there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game.”

She gazed at him with touched and troubled eyes. “Is that all?”

He tried to penetrate her question. Twice he had answered it and still she was unsatisfied. He couldn’t be sure what she expected him to say. “Is that all?” he repeated. “What more is there?”