No! Don't ask me to go
to the cook-tent! It is impossible. As for my plans, I--"
He stopped, stilled by a sudden, overwhelming sense of desolation. All
this meant that he would have to leave Christine! His days with the
show were over. His sweet, throbbing hours with her were at an end.
Life for him had changed as with the blinking of an eye. Nothing could
be the same. All the loneliness of despair he had known during those
weeks of fear and trembling was as naught compared to the outlook that
now confronted him, so bleak and so barren that his young soul
sickened. For the moment it seemed to him that she was about to go out
of his life forever.
His heart revolted. There surged up the fierce impulse to cast away
his patrimony, his name, his pride and honor. He would not desert her,
even for a day.
"As for my plans," he began once more, and again stopped.
Joey understood the struggle that was going on within him. The old
clown, in his own capricious life, had been called upon a hundred
times to give up the things he loved, the associations he cherished.
"We'll talk 'em over later on, David," he said, putting his arm over
the boy's shoulder.
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