“My dearest, my dearest, how absurdly you talk!” interrupted her husband.  “You know well that without that my act would be commonplace, that no manager would want either it or me.  And how, pray, should we live if that were to happen?”

“There would always be my salary; we could make that do.”

“As if I would consent to live upon your earnings and add nothing myself!  No, no!  I shall never do that—­never.  It is not as though that foolish dream of long ago had come true, and I might hope one day to retire.  I am of the circus, and of it I shall always remain.”

“I wish you might not; I wish the dream might come true, even yet,” she made reply.  “Why shouldn’t it?  Wilder ones have come true for other people; why should they not for you?”

Before her husband could make any response to this, the whole trend of the conversation was altered by the boy.

“Father,” he said, “am I to do the trick to-night?  Senor Sperati says it is silly of me to sit about all dressed and ready if I am to do nothing, like a little super, instead of a performer and an artist.”

“Oh, but that is not kind of the senor to say that,” his father replied, soothing his ruffled feelings.  “You are an artist, of course; never super—­no, never.  But if you shall do the trick or not, I cannot say.  It will depend, as it did at the matinee.  If I feel it is right, you shall do it; but if I feel it is wrong, then it must be no.  You see, doctor,” catching Cleek’s eye, “what a little enthusiast he is, and with how little fear.”

“Yes, I do see, chevalier; but I wonder if he would be willing to humour me in something?  As he is not afraid, I’ve an odd fancy to see how he’d go about the thing.  Would you mind letting him make the feint you yourself made a few minutes ago?  Only, I must insist that in this instance it be nothing more than a feint, chevalier.  Don’t let him go too near at the time of doing it.  Don’t let him open the lion’s jaws with his own hands.  You do that.  Do you mind?”

“Of a certainty not, monsieur.  Gustave, show the good doctor how you go about it when papa lets you do the trick.  But you are not really to do it just yet, only to bend the head near to Nero’s mouth.  Now then, come, see.”

As he spoke he divided the lion’s jaws and signalled the child to bend.  He obeyed.  Very slowly the little head drooped nearer to the gaping, full-fanged mouth, very slowly and very carefully, for Cleek’s hand was on the boy’s shoulder, Cleek’s eyes were on the lion’s face.  The huge brute was as meek and as undisturbed as before, and there was actual kindness in its fixed eyes.  But of a sudden, when the child’s head was on a level with those gaping jaws, the lips curled backward in a ghastly parody of a smile, a weird, uncanny sound whizzed through the bared teeth, the passive body bulked as with a shock, and Cleek had just time to snatch the boy back when the great jaws struck together with a snap that would have splintered a skull of iron had they closed upon it.