to his parentage. He only knew that the man they called Jim, who had
kicked and beaten and sworn at him with foul oaths until he could bear it
no longer, was no kin of his, though the other had claimed the authority
to abuse him as he abused his horses and dogs when drink and ugliness
were upon him. If only he could find Jim again after all these years,
perhaps he could manage to get the truth out of him, find out what the
man knew of himself, and how he had come to be in a circus troupe. Yet
after all, perhaps it was better not to know. The facts might separate
him from Tony even more than he was separated by his ignorance of them.
As it was, he started even, with neither honor nor shame bequeathed him
from the past. What he was, he was in himself. And if by any miracle of
fortune Tony ever did come to care for him it would be just himself,
plain Dick, that she would love. He knew that.

The thought was vaguely comforting and he, too, fell adreaming. Most of
us foiled humans learn to play the game of make-believe and to find such
consolation as we may therein. Often and often in his lonely hours Dick
Carson had summoned Tony Holiday to his side, a Tony as bright and
beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a
Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe he was
no longer a nameless, impecunious cub reporter, but a man who had arrived
somewhere, made himself worthy, so far as any mere man could, of the
supreme gift of Tony's caring.

To-night, too, Dick played the game determinedly, but somehow he found
its consolation rather meager, as cold and remote as the sparkle of the
June stars, millions of miles away up there in the velvet sky, after
having sat by the side of the living, breathing Tony and, looking into
her happy eyes, known how little, how very little, he was in her
thoughts. She liked him to be near her, he knew, just as she liked her