“I’m not mocking _you_, my dear child! I’m mocking myself—if anyone. It recurs to me continually that this is an amazing adventure that Arthur Van Horne, of New York, Long Island and Newport is so sedulously engaged upon! To paraphrase your own delightful defense, I’m really ‘not that kind of man.’ I assure you I’m not in the habit of making love to show girls, no matter how adorable their mouths may be!” And he smiled at her out of his narrowed eyes and with his quirked, quizzical mouth, as if he expected her to share his amusement and amazement at himself. “Then why don’t you let me alone?” Sally cried, striking her little brown-painted hands together in futile rage. “I wonder!” he mused. “I make up my mind that I’m a blighter and an ass and that I shan’t come near the carnival. I accept invitations enough to take up every minute of my last days in Capital City, and then—without in the least intending to do so—I find myself back in the Palace of Wonders, humbling myself before a pair of little red-sandaled feet that would like nothing better than to kick me for my impudence. Do you suppose, Sally Ford, that I’m falling in love with you? There’s something about you, you know—” “Please go away,” Sally implored him. “It’s almost time for my performance. Gus is ballyhooing Jan now and I come next.” “As I was saying, when you interrupted me,” Van Horne reproved her mockingly, “there’s something about you, you know. Last night when I had the honor of saving your life and seeing your adorable little face washed clean of the brown paint, I was surprised at myself. I really was, I give you my word! “Do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to swing you up into my arms, you amazingly tiny thing, and run away with you. If you hadn’t looked so young and—pure, I believe the favorite word is—I’d have yielded to the impulse. I suppress so few of my unholy desires that I suppose this discipline is good for my soul—Now, what the devil are you looking at, instead of listening to the confessions of a young man?” he broke off with a genuine note of irritation in his charming voice. “Who is that beautiful woman?” Sally asked in a low voice, her eyes still fixed upon the golden-haired woman whom Van Horne had called “Enid,” and who had just entered the tent alone, her small body, clad in the green knitted silk sports suit, moving through the crowd with proud disdain. “Again I am forced to forgive you,” Van Horne sighed humorously. “I seem always to be forgiving you, Sally Ford! You are merely asking a question which is inevitably asked when Enid Barr first bursts upon a startled public.