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And then Jeanette came down, and poured their coffee, and asked about the news in the morning paper.

Dressed for her trip to the circus, Anne looked like a girl in her teens–white skirt and short green coat–stout sports shoes and white hat. She wore her silver beads, and Christopher said, “I’m not sure that I would if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“In such a crowd.”

But she kept them on.

They motored to the circus grounds, and came in out of the white glare to the cool dimness of the tent as if they had dived from the sun-bright surface of the sea. But there the resemblance ceased. Here was no silence, but blatant noise–roar and chatter and shriek, the beat of the tom-tom, the thin piping of a flute–the crash of a band. But it was the thin piping which Christopher followed, guiding Anne with his hand on her arm.

Following the plaintive note, they came at last to the snake-charmer–an old man in a white turban. The snakes were in a covered basket. He sat with his feet under him and piped.

Christopher spoke to him in a strange tongue. The piping broke off abruptly and the man answered with eagerness. There was a quick interchange of phrases.

“I know his village,” Christopher said; “he is going to show you his snakes.”

A crowd gathered, but the snake-charmer saw only the big man who had spoken to his homesick heart, and the girl with the silver beads. He knew another girl who had had a string of beads like that–and they had brought her luck–a dark-skinned girl, his daughter. Her husband had bestowed the beads on her marriage night, and her first child had been a son.

He put the thin reed to his lips, and blew upon it. The snakes lifted their heads. He drew them up and out of the basket, and put them through their fantastic paces. Then he laid aside his pipe, shut them in their basket, and spoke to Christopher.

“He says that no evil can teach you while you wear the beads,” Christopher told Anne.

The old man, with his eyes on her intent face, spoke again. “What you think is evil–cannot be evil,” Christopher interpreted. “The gods know best.”

They moved toward the inner tent.

“Are you tired?” Christopher asked. “We don’t have to stay.”

“I want to stay,” and so they went in, and presently with a blare of trumpets the great parade began. They looked down on men and women in Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on camels–painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan chairs–Cleopatra, Pompadour–history reduced to pantomime, color imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer showed in the press of the crowd.

Christopher’s eyes went to Anne. She was leaning forward, one hand clasping the silver beads. He would have given much to know what was in her mind. How little she was and how young. And how he wanted to get her away from the thing which hung suspended over her like a keen-edged sword.

But to get her away–how? He could never get her away from her thoughts. Unless….

Suddenly he heard her laughing. Two clowns were performing with a lot of little dogs. One of the dogs was a poodle who played the fool. “What a darling,” Anne was saying.

There was more than they could look at–each ring seemed a separate circus–one had to have more than a single pair of eyes. Christopher was blind to it all–except when Anne insisted, “Look–look!”

Six acrobats were in the ring–four men and two women. Their tights were of a clear shimmering blue, with silver trunks. One could not tell the women from the men, except by their curled heads, and their smaller stature. They were strong, wholesome, healthy. Christopher knew the quality of that health–hearts that pumped like machines–obedient muscles under satin skins. One of the women whirled in a series of handsprings, like a blue balloon–her body as fluid as quicksilver. If he could only borrow one-tenth of that endurance for Anne–he might keep her for years.