It was a daring part to play, but the young man watching
realized that she had the free grace to carry it out successfully.
She danced the fandango to a finish, swept him another low bow, and
presented laughingly to him the tambourine for his donation. Then,
suddenly flinging aside the instrument, she curtsied and caught at his
hand.

"Will the senor have his fortune told?"

Bucky drew a handful of change from his pocket and selected a gold
eagle. "I suppose I must cross your palm with gold," he said, even while
his subconscious mind was running on the new complication presented to
him by this discovery.

He was very clear about one thing. He must not let her know that he knew
her for a girl. To him she must still be a boy, or their relation would
become impossible. She had trusted in her power to keep her secret from
him. On no other terms would she have come with him; of so much he was
sure, even while his mind groped for a sufficient reason to account for
an impulse that might have impelled her. If she found out that he knew,
the knowledge would certainly drive her at once from him. For he knew
that not the least charm of the extraordinary fascination she had
for him lay in her sweet innocence of heart, a fresh innocence
that consisted with this gay Romany abandon, and even with a mental
experience of the sordid, seamy side of life as comprehensive as that of
many a woman twice her age. She had been defrauded out of her childish
inheritance of innocence, but, somehow, even in her foul environment
the seeds of a rare personal purity had persistently sprung up and
flourished. Some flowers are of such native freshness that no nauseous
surroundings can kill their fragrance. And this was one of them.

Meanwhile, her voice ran on with the patter of her craft. There was the
usual dark woman to be circumvented and the light one to be rewarded.
Jealousies and rivalries played their part in the nonsense she glibly
recited, and somewhere in the future lay, of course, great riches and
happiness for him.

With a queer little tug at his heart he watched the dainty finger
that ran so lightly over his open palm, watched, too, the bent head so
gracefully fine of outline and the face so mobile of expression when the
deep eyes lifted to his in question of the correctness of her reading.
He would miss the little partner that had wound himself so tightly
round his heart. He wondered if he would find compensating joy in this
exquisi