r the first
time. You think because she smiles at Harry that she loves him; you
think because she is the only woman he talks to that he loves her; you
do not know her. She is young, she is beautiful and a dancer. She has
had many lovers ever since she put her hair up, and learned how she
could make a fool of a man with her eyes and her smile, and she has made
them pay toll. She always did that from the first." There was a note of
fierce pride in his harsh, brief laughter. "Yes, she would smile and
promise anything with her eyes, but she gave nothing. It is
strange"--the old Spaniard, his austere spirit mellowed by his excellent
cognac, fell into a mood of confidential musing, an indulgence which he
rarely permitted himself--"that Hugh, the child of a woman I never saw,
reaches my heart more than my own daughter does. But Pearl is a study to
me. I say to myself, 'She cares for nothing but money, applause,
admiration,' and yet, even while I say it, I am not sure; I do not know,
I do not know."

Again he admired the glints of firelight reflected in his cognac glass.
"But this I do know, Jose, she is an actress before she is anything
else."

Jose leered knowingly. "You think only of your daughter," he said. "What
about Saint Harry? He has mad blood in him, too. It is only a few years
that he has been a saint; before that the Devil held full sway over him.
And," he added pensively, after a moment's cogitation, "there are many
lessons one learns from the Devil."

"You should know," returned Gallito, with his twisting, sardonic smile.

"Ah, the Devil is not all bad," said Jose defensively. "One can learn
from him the lesson of perseverance, and perseverance is a virtue."

Gallito waved his hand with a polite gesture. "You know more of him and
his lessons than I, Jose. I am always ready to grant that." He took
another sip of cognac, blew a succession of smoke wreaths toward the
ceiling, and again resumed his midnight philosophizings. "What puzzles
me, Jose, is what is going to become of us in Heaven. We shall never be
content. Content is a lesson that no one has ever learned. Look at Saint
Harry. He has Heaven right here. His time to himself, enough to live on
without working, no women to bother him, your cooking; and it may be on
that that you will win an entrance to Heaven; it will certainly be on
nothing else. But, if, as you say, he is interested in my daughter, he
is throwing away all chance of keeping Paradise."

"