“Hello, Don,” she said cordially.  “Brought a friend?”

Eden liked her.  She had an easy, friendly manner, and there was something boyish and devil-may-care about her.

“Yes, it’s fun.  I’m mad about it,” she said in reply to Eden’s questions.  “I always want to let go, when I come down on the bar.  You don’t feel your weight at all, as you would on a stationary trapeze.”

The big drum boomed outside, and the publicity man began shouting to newly arrived boatloads.  Miss Welch took a last pull at her cigarette.  “Now you’ll have to get out, Don.  I change for the next act.  This time I go up in a black evening dress, and lose the skirt in the basket before I start down.”

“Yes, go along,” said Eden.  “Wait for me outside the door.  I’ll stay and help her dress.”

Hedger waited and waited, while women of every build bumped into him and begged his pardon, and the red pages ran about holding out their caps for coins, and the people ate and perspired and shifted parasols against the sun.  When the band began to play a two-step, all the bathers ran up out of the surf to watch the ascent.  The second balloon bumped and rose, and the crowd began shouting to the girl in a black evening dress who stood leaning against the ropes and smiling.  “It’s a new girl,” they called.  “It ain’t the Countess this time.  You’re a peach, girlie!”

The balloonist acknowledged these compliments, bowing and looking down over the sea of upturned faces,—­but Hedger was determined she should not see him, and he darted behind the tent-fly.  He was suddenly dripping with cold sweat, his mouth was full of the bitter taste of anger and his tongue felt stiff behind his teeth.  Molly Welch, in a shirt-waist and a white tam-o’-shanter cap, slipped out from the tent under his arm and laughed up in his face.  “She’s a crazy one you brought along.  She’ll get what she wants!”

“Oh, I’ll settle with you, all right!” Hedger brought out with difficulty.

“It’s not my fault, Donnie.  I couldn’t do anything with her.  She bought me off.  What’s the matter with you?  Are you soft on her?  She’s safe enough.  It’s as easy as rolling off a log, if you keep cool.”  Molly Welch was rather excited herself, and she was chewing gum at a high speed as she stood beside him, looking up at the floating silver cone.  “Now watch,” she exclaimed suddenly.  “She’s coming down on the bar.  I advised her to cut that out, but you see she does it first-rate.  And she got rid of the skirt, too.  Those black tights show off her legs very well.  She keeps her feet together like I told her, and makes a good line along the back.  See the light on those silver slippers,—­that was a good idea I had.  Come along to meet her.  Don’t be a grouch; she’s done it fine!”

Molly tweaked his elbow, and then left him standing like a stump, while she ran down the beach with the crowd.

Though Hedger was sulking, his eye could not help seeing the low blue welter of the sea, the arrested bathers, standing in the surf, their arms and legs stained red by the dropping sun, all shading their eyes and gazing upward at the slowly falling silver star.