“All right!” he cried, flinging his arms wide in a gesture of utter abandonment. “We’ll run away tonight. We’ll keep going until we get out of the state. We’ll lie about our ages. We’ll find someone somewhere to marry us, and we’ll—have each other if we have nothing else in the world, Sally!”
His exultant young voice and his arms demanded her, but she held back strangely, while her face went ghastly white and old in the moonlight.
“I—I forgot to tell you my news,” she said dully, tonelessly, her hands flattened against her breast. “Mrs. Bybee found out something about—about my mother, about me.”
Ecstasy was wiped from David’s face, leaving it hurt and bewildered. “So you’re going to find her? Go back to her? I—I suppose I’m glad.”
“No,” she shook her head drearily. “I can’t marry you or—anyone, David. My mother was not Mrs. Nora Ford. I don’t know who she was! I don’t even know what my name really is—if I have a name! Whoever my mother was she was ashamed I’d been born, she paid Mrs. Ford to take me away when I was an infant, away from New York, so—so I wouldn’t disgrace her. I’m the ugly name Nita called me today. I’m—I’m—”
“You’re my Sally,” David said gently, his arms gathering her in, holding her comfortingly against his breast, in a passionless embrace of utter tenderness. “Do you think I would let that make any difference at all? If anything could, it would make me love you more. But I love you now with every bit of me. And we’ll be married, Sally. What do I care about being a scientific farmer?” But there was a note of bravado, of regret in his voice that did not escape her love attuned ears.
“No, David,” she whispered, her hands straying over his face as if memorizing every dear line of it. “We’ll wait. I can wait. I’ve waited twelve years to find my mother, and I didn’t give up hope until today. I would wait twice twelve years for you. I’ll stick with the carnival if Pop Bybee will let me, and if the police don’t find us. Then when you’re through college—?”
“But I’m damned if I can see how I’m to get back!” David burst out. “We are both trapped in this second-rate carnival—and a first rate one would be bad enough!”
“We won’t have to stay after we get to New York,” Sally interrupted reasonably. “We can start life again. This trouble will blow over. You might even learn some other profession in the east—”
“I don’t want to learn anything else, live anywhere else but in the middle west. It’s my land. I love it. I want to serve it. But, oh, Sally, let’s not torture ourselves any more. I know I mustn’t marry you under this cloud, but let’s be happy for a few minutes before we go back to the show train. No, don’t, darling!” as she lifted her arms. “Just sit there on my coat and let me look at you. You’re the most beautiful thing in the world. Lovely Sally!”