And this creature who led him there--this grotesque object with the
chalky face and coal-black eyebrows that ran up in tall triangles to
meet a still chalkier pate--this figure with the red and black
crescents on his cheeks and the baggy, spotted suit of red and white
and blue and the conical hat--who and what was he?
The clown!
He was not dreaming--he was in the dressing-tent of the circus,
enveloped by the dull, magic atmosphere that comes in the smoke of
burning oils,--an atmosphere that is never to be found outside the low
walls of a dressing-tent. He experienced a sudden feeling of
suffocation. The whole world seemed to have closed in upon him; a drab
sky almost touched his head; the horizon seemed to have rushed up to
within ten feet of where he stood.
His bewildered gaze took in the horses, the boxes, the trunks, the
ring paraphernalia, the "properties," the discarded uniforms of
attendants--cast in apparent confusion here, there and everywhere.
Somehow, as he stared, this conglomerate mass of unfamiliar things
seemed to creep away into the black shadows he had not perceived
before; the drab dome of the tent began to swirl above his head, like
a merry-go-round; the lights danced and then went out.
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