Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/106

 He nodded as if he understood, leaning elbows on the table.

"I am going to pack the days full"—she went on. "Why not? I shall have only a few months—and then—annihilation" She flung her question across the table. "You believe that, don't you?"

He evaded. "We sleep—'perchance to dream.'" "I don't want to dream. They might be horrid dreams"

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 100