Fran, remaining in the empty cage, stood at the front, projecting her hand through the bars to receive the greetings of the crowd. Almost every one wanted to shake hands with her. They couldn't tell of their surprise over her identity, of their admiration for her courage, of their joy at her safety. They could do nothing but look into her eyes, press her hand, then go into a humdrum world in which are no lions— and not many Frans.

"Look, look!" Simon Jefferson suddenly grasped Robert Clinton's hand, and pointed toward the tent-roof. "There they are!"

Something very strange had happened up there, but it was lost to Clinton's keen jealous gaze—one of those happenings in the soul, which, however momentous, passes unobserved in the midst of the throng.

"Not so fast!" Grace cautioned Gregory. "We must wait up here till the very last—don't you see Mr. Clinton? And Simon Jefferson is now pointing us out. We can't go down that way—"

"We!" Gregory harshly echoed. "We! I have nothing to do with you, Grace Noir. Go to him, if you will."

Grace turned ashen pale. "What do you mean?" she stammered. "You tell me to go to Mr. Clinton?"

"I tell you to go where you please. That girl yonder is my daughter, do you understand? Don't hold me back! I shall go to her and proclaim her as my child to the world. Do you hear me? That's my Fran!"

Grace shrank back in the suspicion that Hamilton Gregory had gone mad like the rest of the crowd. "Do you mean that you never want to see me again? Do you mean that you want me to marry Mr. Clinton?"

"I do not care what you do," he said, still more roughly.

"You do not care?" she stammered, bewildered. "What has happened? You do not care—for me?"

She looked deep into his eyes, but found no incense burning there. The shrine was cold.

"Mr. Gregory! And after all that has passed between us? After I have given you my—myself—"

Gregory seized her arm, as if to hold her off. His eyes were burning dangerously: "I saw murder in your heart while you were watching Fran," he whispered fiercely. "That's my daughter, do you understand? I know you now, I know you now...." He stumbled down the steps, pushing out of his way those who opposed his progress.

Grace stared after him with bloodless cheeks and smoldering eyes. Clearly, she decided, the sight of Fran's fearful danger had unbalanced his mind. But how could he care so much about that Fran? And how could he leave her, knowing that Robert Clinton was beginning to climb upward with eyes fastened upon her face?

But it was not the sight of Fran's danger that had for ever alienated Gregory from Grace Noir. In an instant, she had stood revealed to him as an unlovely monster. His sensitive nature, always abnormally alive to outward impressions, had thrilled responsively to the exultation of the audience. He had endured the agony of suspense, he had shared the universal enthusiasm. If, in a sense, he was a series of moods, each the result of blind impulse, it so happened that Grace's hiss—"It's the hand of God," turned his love to aversion; she was appealing as a justification of personal hatred, to the God they were both betraying.

Grace began to tremble as she watched Robert Clinton coming up, and Hamilton Gregory descending. She had trusted foolishly to a broken reed, but it was not too late to preserve the good name she had been about to besmirch. The furnace-heat in which rash resolves are forged, was cooled. Gregory had deserted Fran's mother; he was false to Mrs. Gregory; he would perhaps have betrayed Grace in the end; but Clinton was at hand, and his adoration would endure.

In the meantime, the voice of Fran was to be heard above that of the happy crowd: "I love you all. You helped me do it. I should certainly have been mangled but for you perfect heroes. Yes, thank you.... Yes, I feel fine....And, oh, men and women, I could just feel your spirits holding mine up till I was so high—I was in the clouds. That's what subdued Samson. He knew I wasn't afraid. He knew it! And I wanted to win out for your sakes as well as my own—yes I did! Thank you men....Thank you, women....Well, if here aren't the children; too—bless your brave hearts!...And is that your baby? My goodness, and what a baby it is!...No, I'm not a bit tired—"

She stopped suddenly, on feeling a crushing grip. She looked down, a frown forming on her brow, but the sun shone clear when she saw Abbott Ashton. She gave him a swift look, as if to penetrate his inmost thoughts.

He met her eyes unfalteringly. "It's already nine o'clock," he said with singular composure. "Don't forget nine-thirty."

Then he disappeared in the crowd.

Fran saw the ranks thinning before her. She was glad, for suddenly she found herself very tired. What would Abbott think? Would he, henceforth, see nothing but the show-girl of tinsel and trainer's whip, for ever showing through the clear glass of her real self? At nine-thirty, what would Abbott say to her? and how should she reply? The thought of him obscured her vision of admiring faces. Her manner lost its spontaneity.

Then, to her amazement, she beheld Hamilton Gregory stumbling toward her, looking neither to right nor left, seeing none but her—Hamilton Gregory at a show! Hamilton Gregory here, of all places, his eyes wide, his head thrown back as if to bare his face to her startled gaze.

"Fran!" cried Gregory, thrusting forth his arms to take her hands. "Fran! Even now, the bars divide us. But oh, I am so glad, so glad— and God answered my prayer and saved you, Fran—my daughter!"



CHAPTER XXIV

NEAR THE SKY



It was half-past nine when Abbott met Fran, according to appointment, before the Snake Den. From her hands she had removed the color of Italy, and from her body, the glittering raiment of La Gonizetti.

Fran came up to the young man from out the crowded street, all quivering excitement. In contrast with the pulsing life that ceaselessly changed her face, as from reflections of dancing light- points, his composure showed almost grotesque.

"Here I am," she panted, shooting a quizzical glance at his face, "are you ready for me? Come on, then, and I'll show you the very place for us."

Abbott inquired serenely, "Down there in the Den?"

Fran scrutinized him anew, always wondering how he had taken the lions. What she saw did not alarm her.

"No," she returned, "not in the Den. You're no Daniel, if I am a Charmer. No dens for us."

"Nor lion-cages?" inquired Abbott, still inscrutable; "never again?"

"Never again," came her response; it was a promise.

As they made their way through the noisy "city square" she kept on wondering. Since his face revealed nothing, his disapproval, at any rate, was not so great as to be beyond control. Did that signify that he did not feel enough for her really to care? Better for him to be angry about the show, than not to care.

Fran stopped before the Ferris Wheel.

"Let's take a ride," she said, a little tremulously. "Won't need tickets. Bill, stop the wheel; I want to go right up. This is a friendof mine—Mr. Ashton. And Abbott, this is an older friend than you—Mr. Bill Smookins."

Mr. Bill Smookins was an exceedingly hard-featured man, of no recognizable age. Externally, he was blue overalls and greasy tar.

Abbott grasped Bill's hand, and inquired about business.

"Awful pore, sense Fran lef' the show," was the answer, accompanied by a grin that threatened to cut the weather-beaten face wide open.

Fran beamed. "Mr. Smookins knew my mother—didn't you, Bill? He was awful good to me when I was a kid. Mr. Smookins was a Human Nymph in those days, and he smoked and talked, he did, right down under the water—remember, Bill? That was sure-enough water—oh, he's a sure- enough Bill, let me tell you!"

Bill intimated, as he slowed down the engine, that the rheumatism he had acquired under the water, was sure-enough rheumatism—hence his change of occupation. "I was strong enough to be a Human Nymph," he explained, "but not endurable. Nobody can't last many years as a Human Nymph."

Abbott indicated his companion—"Here's one that'll last my time."

The wheel stopped. He and Fran were barred into a seat.

"And now," Fran exclaimed, "it's all ups and downs, just like a moving-picture of life. Why don't you say something, Mr. Ashton? But no, you can keep still—I'm excited to death, and wouldn't hear you anyway. I want to do all the talking—I always do, after I've been in the cage. My brain is filled with air—so this is the time to be soaring up into the sky, isn't it! What is your brained filled with?— but never mind. We'll be just two balloons—my! aren't you glad we haven't any strings on us—suppose some people had hold!—I, for one, would be willing never to go down again. Where are the clouds?—Wish we could meet a few. Down there on the solid earth—oh, down there the first things you meet are reasons for things, and people's opinions of how things look, and reports of what folks say. And up here, there's nothing but the moon—isn't it bright! See how I'm trembling—always do, after the lions. Now, Abbott, I'll leave a small opening for just one word—"

"I'll steady you," said Abbott, briefly, and he took her hand. She did not appear conscious of his protecting clasp.

"I never see the moon so big," she went on, breathlessly, "without thinking of that night when it rolled along the pasture as if it wanted to knock us off the foot-bridge for being where we oughtn't. I never could understand why you would stay on that bridge with a perfect stranger, when your duty was to be usher at the camp-meeting! You weren't ushering me, you know, you were holding my hand—I mean, I was holding your hand, as Miss Sapphira says I shouldn't. What a poor helpless man—as I'm holding you now, I presume! But I laughed in meeting. People ought to go outdoors to smile, and keep their religion in a house, I guess. I'm going to tell you why I laughed, for you've never guessed, and you've always been afraid to ask—"

"Afraid of you, Fran?"

"Awfully, I'm going to show you—let go, so I can show you. No, I'm in earnest—you can have me, afterwards....Remember that evangelist? There he stood, waving his hands—as I'm doing now—moving his arms with his eyes fastened upon the congregation—this way—look, Abbott."

"Fran! As if I were not already looking."

"Look—just so; not saying a word—only waving this way and that... And it made me think of our Hypnotizer—the man that waves people into our biggest tent—he seems to pick 'em up bodily and carry them in his arms. Well! And if the people are to be waved into a church, it won't take much of a breeze to blow them out. I don't believe in soul- waving. But that doesn't mean that I don't believe in the church—does it?—do you think?"

"You believe in convictions, Fran. And since you've come into the church, you don't have to say that you believe in it."

"Yes—there's nothing on the outside, and oh, sometimes there's so little, so little under the roof—what do you think of me, Abbott?"

"Fran, I think you are the most—"

"But do you!" she interposed, still unsteadily. "In the superlative? I don't see how you can, after that exhibition behind the bars. Anyway, I want you to talk about yourself. What made you go away from town? But that's not the worst: what made you stay away? And what were you doing off there wherever it was, while poor little girls were wondering themselves sick about you? But wait!—the wheel's going down—down—down....Good thing I have you to hold to—poor Miss Sapphira, she can't come, now! Listen at all the street-criers, getting closer, and the whistle-sounds—I wish we had whistles; the squawky kind. See my element, Abbott, the air I've breathed all my life—the carnival. Here we are, just above the clouds of confetti....Now we're riding through....pretty damp, these clouds are, don't you think! Those ribbons of electric lights have been the real world for me. Abbott—they were home....No, Bill, we don't want to get out. We intend to ride until you take this wheel to pieces. And oh, by the way, Bill—just stop this wheel, every once in a while, will you?—when we're up at the very tiptop. All right—good-by."

And Abbott called gaily, "Good-by, Mr. Smookins!"

"I'm glad you did that, Abbott. You think you're somebody, when somebody else thinks so, too. Now we're rising in the world." Fran was so excited that she could not keep her body from quivering. In spite of this, she fastened her eyes upon Abbott to ask, suddenly, "'Most'— what?"

"Most adorable," Abbott answered, as if he had been waiting for the prompting. "Most precious. Most bewitchingly sweet. Most unanswerably and eternally—Fran!"

"And you—" she whispered.

"And I," he told her, "am nothing but most wanting-to-be-loved."

"It's so queer," Fran said, plaintively. "You know, Abbott, how long you've fought against me. You know it, and I don't blame you, not in the least. There's nothing about me to make people....But even now, how can you think you understand me, when I don't understand myself?"

"I don't," he said, promptly. "I've given up trying to understand you. Since then, I've just loved. That's easy."

"What will people think of a superintendent of public schools caring for a show-girl, even if she is Fran Nonpareil. How would it affect your career?"

"But you have promised never again to engage in a show, so you are not a show-girl."

"What about my mother who lived and died as a lion-tamer? What will you do about my life-history? I'd never speak to a man who could feel ashamed of my mother. What about my father who has never publicly acknowledged me? I'd not want to have anything to do with a man who— who could be proud of him."

"As to the past, Fran, I have only this to say: whatever hardships it contained, whatever wrongs or wretchedness—it evolved you, you, the Fran of to-day—the Fran of this living hour. And it's the Fran of this living hour that I want to marry."

Fran covered her face with her hands. For a while there was silence, then she said:

"Father was there, to-night."

"At the lion-show? Impossible! Mr. Gregory go to a—a—to—a—"

"Yes, it is possible for him even to go to a show. But to do him justice, he was forced under the tent, he had no intention of doing anything so wicked as that, he only meant to do some little thing like running away—But no, I can't speak of him with bitterness, now. Abbott, he seems all changed."

Abbott murmured, as if stupefied, "Mr. Gregory at a show!"

"Yes, and a lion-show. When it was over he came to me—he was so excited—"

"So was I," spoke up the other—"rather!"

"You didn't show it. I thought maybe you wouldn't care if I had been eaten up....No, no, listen. He wanted to claim me—he called me 'daughter' right there before the people, but they thought it was just a sort of—of church name. But he was wonderfully moved. I left the tent with him, and we had a long talk—I came from him to you. I never saw anybody so changed."

"But why?"

"You see, he thought I was going to be killed right there before his eyes, and seeing it with his very own eyes made him feel responsible. He told me, afterwards, that when he found out who it was in the cage, he thought of mother in a different way,—he saw how his desertion had driven her to earning her living with showmen, so I could be supported. All in all, he is a changed man."

"Then will he acknowledge you?—but no, no,..."

"You see? He can't, on account of Mrs. Gregory. There's no future for him, or for her, except to go on living as man and wife—without the secretary. He imagines it would be a sort of reparation to present me to the world as his daughter, he thinks it would give him happiness— but it can't be. Grace Noir has found it all out—"

"Then she will tell!" Abbott exclaimed, in dismay.

"She would have told but for one thing. She doesn't dare, and it's on her own account—of course. She has been terribly—well, indiscreet. You can't think to what lengths she was willing to go—not from coldly making up her mind, but because she lost grip on herself, from always thinking she couldn't. So she went away with Bob Clinton—she'll marry him, and they'll go to Chicago, out of Littleburg history—poor Bob! Remember the night he was trying to get religion? I'm afraid he'll conclude that religion isn't what he thought it was, living so close to it from now on."

"All this interests me greatly, dear, because it interests you. Still, it doesn't bear upon the main question."

"Abbott, you don't know why I went to that show to act. You thought I was caring for a sick friend. What do you think of such deceptions?"

"I think I understand. Simon Jefferson told me of a girl falling from a trapeze; it was possibly La Gonizetti's daughter. Mrs. Jefferson told me that Mrs. Gregory is nursing some one. The same one, I imagine. And La Gonizetti was a friend of yours, and you took her place, so the mother could stay with the injured daughter."

"You're a wonder, yourself!" Fran declared, dropping her hands to stare at him. "Yes, that's it. All these show-people are friends of mine. When the mayor was trying to decide what carnival company they'd have for the street fair, I told him about this show, and that's why it's here. Poor La Gonizetti needs the money dreadfully—for they spend it as fast as it's paid in. The little darling will have to go to a hospital, and there's nothing laid by. The boys all threw in, but they didn't have much, themselves. Nobody has. Everybody's poor in this old world—except you and me. I've taken La Gonizetti's place in the cage all day to keep her from losing out; and if this wasn't the last day, I don't know whether I'd have promised you or not.... Samson was pretty good, but that mask annoyed him. So you see—but honestly, Abbott, doesn't all this make you feel just a wee bit different about me?"

"It makes me want to kiss you, Fran."

"It makes you"—she gasped—"want to do—that? Why, Abbott! Nothing can save you."

"I'm afraid not," he agreed.

The car was swinging at the highest reach of the wheel. The engine stopped.

She opened her eyes very wide. "I'd think you'd be afraid of such a world-famous lion-trainer," she declared, drawing back." Some have been, I assure you."

"I'm not afraid," Abbott declared, drawing her toward him. He would have kissed her, but she covered her face with her hands and bent her head instinctively.

"Up!" cried Abbott. "Up, Samson, up!"

Fran laughed hilariously, and lifted her head. She looked at him through her fingers. Her face was a garden of blush-roses. She pretended to roar but the result was not terrifying; then she obediently held up her mouth.

"After all," said Fran, speaking somewhat indistinctly, "you haven't told why you ran away to leave poor Fran guessing where you'd gone. Do you know how I love you, Abbott?"

"I think I know."

"I'm glad—for I could never tell you. Real love is like real religion—you can't talk about it. Makes you want to joke, even if you can't think of anything funny to say—makes you chatter about anything else, or just keep still. Seems to be something down here—this is my heart, isn't it?—hope I have the right place, I left school so early—seems even when I refer to it I ought to—well, as I said, make a sort of joke...."

"But this is no joke," said Abbott, kissing her again.

"Yes," said Fran, happily, "we can talk about it in that way. Isn't Bill Smookins a dear to keep us up here so long?"

It was a good while later that Abbott said, "As to why I left Littleburg: Bob knew of a private school that has just been incorporated as a college. A teacher's needed, one with ideas of the new education—the education that teaches us how to make books useful to life, and not life to books—the education that teaches happiness as well as words and figures; just the kind that you didn't find at my school, little rebel! Bob was an old chum of the man who owns the property so he recommended me, and I went. It's a great chance, a magnificent opening. The man was so pleased with the way I talked— he's new to the business, so that must be his excuse—that I am to be the president."

Fran's voice came rather faintly—"Hurrah! But you are to be far, far above my reach, just as I prophesied. Don't you remember what I said to you during our drive through Sure-Enough Country?"

"And that isn't all," said Abbott, looking straight before him, and pretending that he had not heard. "In that town—Tahlelah, Oklahoma—I discovered, out in the suburbs, a cottage—the dearest little thing— as dear as...as Mr. Smookins; just big enough for a girl like Fran. I rented it at once—of course, it oughtn't to be standing there idle—there's such a fragrant flower-garden—I spent some time arranging the grounds as I think you'll like them. I didn't furnish the cottage, though. Women always like to select their own carpets and things, and—"

Fran's face was a dimpled sea of pink and crimson waves, with starry lights in her black eyes for signal-lights. "Oh, you king of hearts!" she exclaimed. "And shall we have a church wedding, and just kill 'em?"

Abbott laughed boyishly. "No—you must remember that your connection with show-life is at an end."

"But—and then—and so," cried Fran rapturously, "I'm to have a home after all, with flower-gardens and carpets and things—a sure-enough home—Abbott, a home with you! Don't you know, it's been the dream of my life to—to—"

Abbott was inexpressibly touched. "Yes, I was just thinking of what I heard you say, once—to belong to somebody."

Fran slipped her arms about his neck. "And what a somebody! To belong to you. And to know that my home is our home...."

Abbott, with a sober sense of his unworthiness, embraced her silently.

From far below came a sudden sound, making its way through the continuity of the street-uproar. It was the chugging of the engine.

The wheel began to revolve.

Down they came—down—down—

Fran looked up at the moon. "Good-by," she called, gaily. "The world is good enough for me!"

THE END