There it all lay just below them--big tents and little tents with gay, lying banners; the merry-go-round with its music-box grinding out "Sweet Rosie O'Grady"; the ferris wheel a gigantic loop of lights. The composite voice of the carnival came up to these two children of carnival who were deserting it, and the roar, muted slightly by distance, was like the music of a heavenly choir in their ears.
"Listen!" Sally whispered, her fingers closing tensely over David's arm. "Gus, ballyhooing The Palace of Wonders. I wonder if he'll remember not to spiel about 'Princess Lalla.'"
They could see him, a small figure from that distance, looking like a Jack-in-the-box as he waved his arms and thundered the dear, familiar phrases which Sally would never forget if she lived to be a hundred.
She was about to run back down the hill, but David strode after her and put his arms about her comfortingly. "Sally, honey, we haven't time! Throw them a kiss from here, and then we've got to hurry away."
She broke from his embrace and flung her arms out in a passionate gesture of love and farewell. "Goodby, Carnival. Thank you for sheltering David and me! Goodby, Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee! Goodby, Gus! Goodby, Jan. Goodby, Noko! Goodby, Boffo! And Babe! Goodby, dancing girls! I hope you all land on Broadway with Ziegfeld! Oh, goodby, Pitty Sing, dear little Betty! Goodby, goodby!" Then she flung herself upon David's breast and held him tight with all the strength in her thin young arms. "I've only got you now, David! Oh, David, what is going to become of us? Do you really love me, darling?"
She strained away from him, to search his beloved face as well as the darkness of the night would permit. Faintly she could see the tremble of his tender, deeply carved lips, so dearly boyish. His eyes looked big and black in the night, but there was a gleam of such divine light in them that her fingers crept up his face tremblingly and closed his eyelids, for she suddenly felt abashed, unworthy of his love.
"I love you with every cell in my body, every thought in my mind and every beat of my heart," David answered huskily. "And now let's travel, honey. I don't know where we're going, but we've got to put as much distance as possible between us and this town before morning."