de.

But in a moment it was over. She looked away from him and rode forward,
like a monarch into a grandly illuminated castle, amidst the whispered
plaudits of her people.

A little girl on a Shetland pony rode at her heels, Robert saw her without
wanting to see her. She obtruded herself vulgarly. She was dressed as a
page, her painfully thin legs looking like sticks of peppermint in their
parti-coloured tights, and either was, or pretended to be, terrified of
her minute and tubbily good-natured mount. At its first move forward she
fell upon its neck with shrill screams and clung on grotesquely, righting
herself at last to make mock faces at the grinning crowd.

"Oh, la, la--la-la!"

She was a plain child with a large nose, slightly Jewish in line, a wide
mouth, and a mass of crinkly fair hair that stood out in a pert halo about
her head. Robert hated her for the brief moment in which she invaded his
consciousness. It was quite evident that she was trying to draw attention
from the splendid creature who had preceded her to her own puny and
outrageous self, and that by some means or other she succeeded. She
gesticulated, she drew herself up in horrible imitation of a proud and
noble bearing, she pretended that the rotund pony was prancing to the
music, and, finally, burst into fits of laughter. The crowd laughed with
her, helplessly as though at a huge joke which she shared with each one of
them in secret.

"Oh, la la, la la."

The man at Robert's side wiped his eyes.

"Well, did you see that? Upon my word----"

"A baggage--that's what I call 'er," the feathered lady retorted severely.
"Mark my words--a baggage."

Rufus jogged Robert in the side.

"Wasn't she a joke? Didn't she make you scream?"

Robert hated them all. Beastly, despicable people who liked beastly,
despicable things.

More horsemen, camels, clowns on foot and clowns on donkeys. Finally the
band, slightly winded by this time, and playing raggedly. The
torch-bearers formed up, and a large gentleman in riding boots stood for a
moment in the light.

"To-morrow evening at eight o'clock--the first performance of the Greatest
Show in Europe--a unique opportunity--better book your seats early, ladies
and gentlemen----"

Then the flaps of the tent fell and all the lights and sounds seemed to go
out at once. The crowd melted away, and only Robert and his companion
remained gazing spellbound at the closed and silent cave which had
sw