ou like!" cried a sunken-eyed young woman, whose
cheap and much-bedraggled finery matched aptly enough with her wan and
haggard countenance. It was the impulse of a moment, but she was the
puppet of impulse and danced on the wires at the slightest touch of
chance.

"Right you are!" cried the man.

And they mounted the steps together.

"It's like going up to the altar, isn't it?" giggled the woman to her
companion.

"More like going up to the gallows," growled the man.

The Showman rattled the coins as he pocketed them, and flinging aside
the canvas admitted them to the booth.

The interior was enveloped in a dim obscurity; hardly deep enough to be
counted as darkness, but oppressive enough to slow the pulses of both.
There was, however, at one end of the booth a large disc projected on
the obscurity: a pale, empty, weirdly-lighted circle, which they stared
at dumbly, with wonder in their eyes.

"Is this some darned fool's joke?" growled the man.

"Hush!" said the woman, "the entertainment has commenced."

And, true enough, the disc at which they had been staring had already a
stirring, as of life, across its surface.

They were aware of a couple of enthralling faces fronting them side by
side on the disc.

One was a woman's face, exquisitely beautiful, with soft blue eyes, full
of the most charming gaiety, and with lips as sweetly winsome as a
child's: the other was a man's face, proud and handsome, the mouth set
firmly, the eyes full of thought.

"Such a face I had dreamed of as my own," sighed the woman.

"So I had imagined I might have been," mused the man.

And then the scenes on the disc began to wax and dwindle rapidly; like
the momentary clinging, and as rapid vanishing, of breath across a
mirror of polished steel.

There was a vague fluttering and interchange of images; an elusive,
intangible influx of suggestions, and an equally dreamy efflux of the
same.

A young girl growing into beautiful womanhood, well-dressed, shapely,
sought eagerly in marriage, admired by the opposite sex, and envied by
her own. Then a woman in the prime of her powers of enjoyment--with her
charms undiminished and her wishes ripened--wedded, and successfully
shaping her life: a woman blessed greatly, and very happy.

And side by side with these dream-fancies, or imaginings, went those of
a young man facing the world gallantly; surmounting every obstacle
easily, and conquering hearts as if by a spell. There was succ