appened? You're ill! It's no wonder. _Mon Dieu_, those
brutes last night . . ."

He pulled her head back against his shoulder, dropping his voice to a
murmur of exquisite gentleness. "_Mon enfant--ma petite enfant_!"

"You saw me fall?" she whispered.

"The men told me when they brought Don Juan out. I didn't see what
happened. Were you hurt or only faint?"

"Oh, my hand? That's nothing. Emile says it will heal in a day or
two. But I felt so stupid. . . . Vardri, you don't think I'm going to
be ill, do you? I've never been ill in my life . . . never!"

The boy made some incoherent answer. Her piteous entreaty tore at his
heart. Every fibre in his starved body ached with the desire to give
her the rest and peace she needed above all things.

What could he do without money? His own miserable wages barely served
for necessities. He was only a useless vagabond, an outcast. He
ground his teeth together at the thought of his own impotence.

"Courage, little one. They will cheer you again to-morrow. They are
cruel, these Spaniards, and fickle. You must not care."

It did not seem strange to either of them that he should be holding her
in his arms. After last night everything had changed. Love, Youth,
and Nature were hard at work weaving the bonds that drew them together.

The fact that she suffered his caresses had given him the right of
manhood to protect her, to be her champion, to fight her battles. If
he could do nothing else for her, at least he could fight. For him the
crown of happiness could be found in loyal service. Of love-making in
its ordinary sense, Vardri neither thought nor dreamed. To have found
his Ideal, the one woman, surely that was enough. The innate
fastidiousness that goes with good breeding had kept his life clean,
his hands unsoiled.

He had hated the other women in the Circus, and felt sorry for them at
the same time; and on their side they liked him and regarded him
somewhat as a fool. Their voices, their coarse expressions, their
light jokes all jarred on him.

He pitied them, for their lives were as hard as his own, and when he
could he helped them, for among the wanderers in Bohemia there is an
ever-abiding comradeship. The element of fanaticism in his nature,
which had once been absorbed by the Cause, now spent itself upon a
human being.

The firm yet gentle clasp in which he held her, was the outward symbol
of the love and courage that made him tense as