There was one secret that he never told to anyone-not even to Cosgrave. He was ashamed of it. He knew it was silly-sillier than in believing in God-and he had almost succeeded in forgetting it when it came true. It happened. Just when he was least expecting it it came round the corner.

First the music, a long way off, but growing louder and fiercer so that it seemed as though his fancy had suddenly jumped out of his brain and was running about by itself, doing just what it liked; then lights, torches with streaming flags of fire that put out the street lamps altogether, and the shadows of people marching-running-leaping-capering.

Robert ran too. He did not stop to think what it was. He was wild with excitement, and as he ran he bounded into the air and waved his arms in a pent-up joy of living and moving. He never had much chance to run. You couldn't run by yourself for nothing. People stared or were annoyed when you bumped against them. But now there was something to run for. There was no one to see or hear him in the deserted Grove, and with each bound he let out an unearthly, exultant whoop.

At the corner where Acacia Grove met the High Street Rufus Cosgrave squirmed out of the pushing, jostling crowd and caught hold of him. He was capless, panting. His red hair stood on end. In the flickering torch light he looked like a small, delirious Loga.

"I say-Stonehouse-I was coming for you-it's a circus-they're going all the way down to the Green-they've got their tent there-if we could only climb up somewhere-I can't see a thing-not even the elephant's legs."

"If we cut round by Griffith's Road we'll get there first," Robert shouted. "Only we've got to run like mad."

He seized Rufus by the hand and they shot free of the procession, up and down dim and decorous streets, swerving round corners and past astonished policemen whose "Now then, you young devils" was lost in the clatter of their feet. Cosgrave gasped, but Robert's hold was relentless, compelling. He could have run faster by himself, but somehow he could not let Cosgrave go. "You've got to stick it," he hissed fiercely. "It's only a minute."

Cosgrave had no choice but to "stick it." It did not even occur to him to resist though his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his head and his lungs on the point of bursting. But the reward was near at hand. There, at the bottom of Griffith's Road, they could see it-the Green, unfamiliar with its garish lights and the ghostly, gleaming tents.

"We've done it!" Robert shouted. "Hurrah-hurrah!"

They had, in fact, time to spare. The procession was still only half-way down the High Street, a dull red glow, like the mouth of a fiery cave, widening with every minute as though to swallow them. There was, indeed, a disconcerting crowd gathered round the chief entrance, but Robert was like a general, cool and vigorous, strung up to the finest pitch of cunning. He wormed his way under the ropes, he edged and insinuated himself between the idle and good-natured onlookers, with Cosgrave, tossed and buffeted, but still in tow, struggling in the backwash. At last they were through, next to the entrance, and in the very front row of all.

"Now you'll see the elephant," Robert laughed triumphantly, "every bit of him,"

"Oh, my word!" Cosgrave gasped. "Oh, my word!"

It was coming. It made itself felt even before it came into sight by the sudden tensity of the crowd, the anxious pressure from behind, the determined pushing back by the righteously indignant in front, the craning of necks, and indistinguishable, thrilling murmur. A small boy, whom Robert recognized as the butcher's son, evidently torn between the dignity and excitement of his new post, stalked ahead and thrust printed notices into the outstretched hands. Robert seized hold of one, but he was too excited to read. He felt Rufus poke him insistently.

"What's it say-what's it say?"

"Shut up-I don't know-look for yourself."

There they were. The six torch-bearers were dressed like mediaeval pages, or near enough. Their tight-fitting cotton hose, sagging a little at the knees, were sky-blue, and their tunics green and slashed with yellow. They wore jaunty velvet caps and fascinating daggers, ready to hand. As they reached the entrance to the tent they halted, and with some uneasy shuffling formed up on either side, making a splendid passage of fire for the ten Moorish horsemen who rode next, fierce fellows these, armed to the teeth, with black, shining faces and rolling eyes. A band struck up inside the tent to welcome them, and they rode through, scarcely bending their proud heads-much to the relief of the more timorous members of the crowd who had eyed the rear end of their noble steeds with a natural anxiety. Unfortunately the torches smoked a good deal, and there was some grumbling.

"'Ere, take the stinking thing out of me eyes, can't yer?"

"Right down dangerous, I calls it. If one of them there sparks gets into me 'at I'll be all ablaze in half a jiffy. And oo'll pay for the feathers, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, shut up-shut up!" Robert whispered bitterly. "Why can't everyone shut up?"

"The Biggest and Best Show in Europe," Rufus was reading aloud in a squeaky treble; "un-pre-ce-dented spectacles-performing sea-lions-great chariot-race-the Legless Wonder from Iceland-Warogha, the Missing Link-the greatest living Lady Equestrian, Madame Gloria Marotti, Mad-rad-oh, I can't read that-Gyp Labelle, the darling of the Folies Bergeres-what's Folies Bergeres, Robert--? Oh, my word-my word!"

It was the Shetland ponies that had saved Robert the trouble of replying that he didn't know. After the ferocious magnificence of the Moorish gentlemen, they came as a sort of comic relief. Everyone laughed, and even the lady with the feather hat recovered her good temper.

"Why, you could keep one of them in the back yard-not an inch bigger than our collie, is he, 'Enry? And Jim's not full grown-not by 'alf."

"As though anyone cared about her beastly collie!" Robert thought.

The elephants, a small one and a big one together to show their absurd proportions, came next. The earth shook under them. They waved their trunks hopefully from side to side, and their little brown eyes, which seemed to have no relation to their bodies, peered out like prisoners out of the peep-holes of a monstrous moving prison. When the man next to Robert offered the smallest of them an empty paper-bag it curled its trunk over his head and opened its pointed mouth and let out a piercing squeal of protest which alarmed its tormentor, and caused his neighbours to regard him with nervous disapproval. But the big elephant seemed to exercise a soothing influence over its companion. It waved its trunk negligently as though in contemptuous dismissal of a commonplace incident.

"My dear," it said, "that's all you can expect of such people."

There were men seated on the big elephants' necks, their legs tucked comfortably behind the enormous flapping ears. They looked mysterious and proud in their position. They wore turbans and carried sticks with pointed iron spikes at the head, and when they came to the low entrance of the tent they prodded their huge beasts, which went down on their knees, painfully yet with a kind of sorrowful pride, and blundered through amidst the admiring murmur of the crowd.

"The way they manage them big brutes!" declared the lady with the feathered hat disconsolately. "And there's our George, a proper 'uman being, and can't be got to do a thing-nohow."

The band inside had stopped, beaten in the hard-fought contest with its rival at the far end of the procession, which thereupon broke out into throaty triumphant trumpet blasts and exultant roll of drums. Rufus clutched wildly at Robert's sleeve.

"Oh, my word, just look at her! Oh, my word!"

Robert craned forward, peering round the embonpoint of the man next him. The procession now scarcely moved, and there was a space between the last elephant and the great coal-black horse that followed-a wide, solemn space, that invited you to realize that this was the finest sight you had ever seen in your life. He was indeed a splendid, terrifying creature. As Rufus Cosgrave said loudly, he was not like a human horse at all. One could imagine him having just burst out of hell, still breathing fire and smoke and rolling his eyes in the anguish of his bridled wickedness. In the glare from the tent-door he gleamed darkly, a wild thing of black flames, and those in the front row of the crowd trod nervously on the toes of those behind, edging out of reach of his restless, dancing hoofs. For it seemed impossible that the woman in the saddle should be really his master. And yet she sat upright and unconcerned. In its black, close-fitting habit, her supple body looked a living, vital part of the splendid beast. She was his brain, stronger than his savage instinct, and every threatening move of his great limbs was dictated to him without a sound, almost without a gesture. A touch of a slender, patent-leather boot set him prancing, an imperceptible twist of the wrist and he stood stock still, foam-necked and helpless. It was a proud-an awe-inspiring spectacle. And it was not only her fearless strength. She was fair and beautiful. So Robert saw her. He saw nothing else. He gazed and gazed, heart-stricken. He did not hear Rufus speak to him, or the band which was blaring out a Viennese waltz, an old thing, whistled and danced half to death long since, but which, having perhaps a spark of immortal youth left among the embers, had not lost its power to make the pulses quicken. Indeed it even played a humble part in this great moment in Robert's life. Though he did not hear it, it poured emotion into the heated, dusty air. It painted the tawdry show with richer colours. It was the rider's invisible retinue. At a touch from her heel the horse danced to it, in perfect time, arching his great neck, and rolling his wild eyes.

She was proud, too. Robert saw how she disdained the gaping multitude. She rode with haughtily lifted head and only once her glance, under the white, arrogant lids, dropped for an instant. Was it chance, was it the agonized intensity of his own gaze which drew it to the small boy almost under her horse's hoofs? (For he had held his ground. He was not afraid. Unlike the rest, his trust in her was limitless and unquestioning. And if she chose to ride him down, he would not care, no more than a fanatic worshipper beneath the wheels of a Juggernaut.) Now under her eyes his heart stood still, his knees shook. She did not smile; she did not recognize his naked, shameless adoration. And that too was well. A smile would have lowered her, brought her down from her superb distance. His happiness choked him. She was the embodiment of everything that he had heard pass in the distance from the silent dusks of Acacia Grove-splendour and power, laughter and music, the beat of a secret pulse answering the tread of invisible processions. She came riding out of the mists of his fancy into light, a living reality that he could take hold of, and set up in his empty temple. She was not his mother, nor Francey, nor God, but she was everything that in their vague and different ways these three had been to him before he lost them. She was something to be worshipped, to be died for, if necessary, with joy and pride.

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 swallowed all the enchantment.

Rufus put his hands into his hair and tugged it desperately.

"Oh, if only I could go-if only I could-- Don't you want to go,

Robert?"

Robert woke partially from his dream.

"I'm going." He turned, and with his hands thrust into his pockets began to walk homewards. Rufus trotted feverishly at his side.

"I say, are you really? But then you've got no people; jolly for you. I wish I hadn't. My pater's so beastly strict; I'm scared of him. I say, when will you go?"

"To-morrow night, of course."

"Have you got the money?"

"No, but I'll get it."

"Oh, I say, I wish I could. P'r'aps I could too. I've got money-yes, I have, even if it is in a beastly tin box. What's the good of saving till you're grown up? I shan't want it then like I do now. It's silly. All grown-up people are silly. When I'm grown up I'll be different. I say, Robert, I can come with you, can't I?"

"Oh, yes-if you want to." He was indifferent. It puzzled him slightly that Rufus should be so eager. What did he know of the true inwardness of what he had seen? What had it got to do with him, anyway?

Rufus brooded, his freckled face puckered with anxious contriving.

"I say, I've got an idea! I'll tell the pater you've asked me to come over and spend the evening with you at your place. It'll be sort of true, won't it? And then he'll never think about the money. You won't mind, will you? It'll never come out-and if it does, I'll say I made it up."

"I don't care. All right."

Rufus drew a great sigh of relief.

"Isn't it ripping? Oh, I say, I wish it was to-morrow night. I hope I don't die first. What did you like best, Robert? Who are you keenest on?"

Robert did not answer. It would have been sacrilege to talk her over-to drag her down into a silly controversy. He longed for the moment when Rufus would have to leave him. He wanted to be alone and silent. Even the thought of Christine and of her inevitable questions hurt him like the touch of a rough, unfeeling hand.

"I liked that kid best-that girl on the funny pony. She must have been at the Folies Bergeres, don't you think? Folies Bergeres sounds French, and she was making sort of French noises. She made me laugh." Something wistful and hungry came into his shrill voice. He pressed close to Robert's side. "I like people who make me laugh. I like them better than anything in the world, don't you? It's jolly to be able to laugh like that-right from one's inside--"

But Robert only smiled scornfully, hugging his secret closer to himself.

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