nated her hard ambition. She lifted her head a little
and, still with it turned from him, looked at the pagan glory of the
day. Her eyes closed with the delight of that moment. She felt her
resistance breaking down, the weakening and softening of her
resolutions. Was she at last to know the splendor of loving and giving?

"Ain't you played with me long enough, Pearl?" his voice was in her ear,
a broken, husky whisper. "What's the use? Why, of course," grasping at
his usual self-confidence, "I'm a fool to get scared this way. You've
showed me that you care, you have, honey; and I guess," with a nervous
laugh, "the Black Pearl hasn't got any damn fool scruples such as I've
been frightening myself out of my skin by attributing to her."

Imperceptibly, almost, her whole body stiffened. Her soft, relaxed,
yielding attitude was gone. But she remained silent, the same ominous,
brooding silence that the desert had held before the storm, had Hanson
but noticed. He did not. He was still pleading: "Why all the time you
been keeping me on the anxious seat, I been telling myself that the
Black Pearl--"

"Yes, the Black Pearl," she interrupted him with her low, unpleasant
laugh. "Don't you care a little that I got that name, Rudolf?"

"Care!" He wound his arms about her now and buried his face in the great
waves of her inky, shining hair, wildly kissing the nape of her neck;
but with a deft twist of her lithe body she slipped almost away from
him, although his arms still held her. "Care? Of course I care. But
what's that got to do with it when I love you like I do? Pearl, if you
were a good deal blacker than you're painted it wouldn't make any
difference to me."

He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, this
time escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her face
was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashes
sweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the Black
Pearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawling
inflections were gone; it was strangely tense.

"I guess so, damn it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got a
hunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in the
desert. Before God, I don't care anything about your past or your
present, if you'll only love me for a while."

With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward
like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over th