would have to fight out his renunciation afresh from the beginning; the dull resignation which had clouded over him of late had all melted away in a second before her restored presence. Merely to see her sent the heat and ecstasy of life back into his veins. Twenty-eight years of existence had not accustomed him to the rush of his own emotions. Such a reasonless joy as this which seized him even while he knew that she was promised to Calladine, still had the power to surprise him. The beginning of the circus did not distract him; rather it favoured him, for under the cover of the general interest he was able to gloat his eyes upon her to his heart’s content. Olver, who had long ago made up his mind about his brother, had now little desire to watch for the manifestations of a passion he took for granted in spite of all Nicco’s denials, and devoted the whole of his rapt attention to the events of the ring. These were enough to transport his simple soul, easily pleased at best. Piebald horses, and fat thighs encased in pink tights, curvetted before him; while with flashing smiles young men and women performed apparently impossible feats of strength and balance. Olver presently conceived the idea of following the circus in his mirror, and alternated between the actual, which was already entrancing enough, and the reflected, which provided him with a world so indescribably and doubly queer. He hoped that the little, queer, brilliant pictures would be preserved forever in the depths of the glass. A fat woman in pink and spangles jumped through paper hoops off the back of a cantering horse, crying “Hop!” as she jumped and again as she landed, and the manager standing in the centre cracked his long whip at the horse’s fetlocks, but only hit the clown, whose whitened face, ghastly under the gas-jets, went bowling round in somersaults over the grass of the ring. There was also a snake-man, dressed from head to foot in emerald green, who contorted himself in the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the sudden cessation of the braying band, into the knots common to all such performers; and the laughter which had accompanied the clown was stilled into a respectful awe. The snake-man, Olver found, was especially effective seen in the mirror. The atmosphere in the tent by now was somewhat clouded by tobacco smoke, softening the hard, high glare of the gas, and through the smoke the faces appeared hazy, sitting round in their rows, likewise the hands, that periodically broke out into a beating of applause. But to Lovel, who had not taken his eyes off Clare, her face was distinct as ever; and his own face, to Daisy Morland, was distinct, and, above his red shirt, dark and proud.