"You mustn't care
like that," she pleaded, seeing the blank desolation that had
come into his face. "It isn't because I don't love you just the
same, and it was good of Barker to keep my place for me, but I
can't go back."
He turned away; she clung to the rough, brown sleeve. "Why, Jim,
when I lie in my little room up there at night"--she glanced
toward the window above them--"and everything is peaceful and
still, I think how it used to be in the old days, the awful noise
and the rush of it all, the cheerless wagons, the mob in the
tent, the ring with its blazing lights, the whirling round and
round on Bingo, and the hoops, always the hoops, till my head got
dizzy and my eyes all dim; and then the hurry after the show, and
the heat and the dust or the mud and the rain, and the rumble of
the wheels in the plains at night, and the shrieks of the
animals, and then the parade, the awful, awful parade, and I
riding through the streets in tights, Jim! Tights!" She covered
her face to shut out the memory. "I couldn't go back to it, Jim!
I just couldn't!" She turned away, her face still hidden in her
hands. He looked at her a long while in silence.
"I didn't know how you'd come to feel about it," he said
doggedly.
"You aren't ANGRY, Jim?" She turned to him anxiously, her eyes
pleading for his forgiveness.
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