eave
caught her in his arms with a murmur of passionate and inarticulate
words. "I love you, I love you," he whispered, his lips seeking hers.

"Pearl, forgive me. I--I--forgot myself, forgive me. Why, you are as
safe here as in your father's cabin. It will never happen again. I'll
never touch you again unless you let me. Why, Pearl," with a tremulous
attempt at a joke, "for the rest of the time that we're here you can
keep me locked up in the other room if you want to, and just pass my
food through the door now and then when you feel like it."

"Oh, Harry," she was still sobbing, "I'm such a devil. All my life I've
been trying to see what I could get. I set out to make everything and
everybody pay me, and I never got anything but chaff; money and jewels
and applause--all chaff. The only happiness is giving, and I want to
give, give, give to you. That's what I been longing to do ever since I
loved you, and all I could do was to call you names--a quitter and a
shirker." She wept afresh. "And the worst of it is I mean it, I wish I
didn't, but I do."

"But you were right," he said, "good and right, too. You hurt my man's
vanity, and I got nasty--sarcastic, you know. I've got you to thank
forever for bringing myself right home to me--showing me to myself. I
was a morbid, love-sick boy, who indulged in so much self-pity that he
thought he was a very fine romantic figure, running off from his
responsibilities and burying himself in the ends of the earth."

"I was jealous, too, of that girl you quit things for, that girl that
was like violets and white roses. I ain't like 'em."

"Jealous! You! It wasn't long that I remembered her, but you were right
again--I liked that life. I'd got used to it. The other kind seemed
impossible to me--I've been a quitter and a shirker--just what you
called me--but I'm going back home to take it all up again, or if you
would rather, I'll stay here and work mines in these mountains, or help
reclaim the desert--if you'll marry me, Pearl."

"But I'm the Black Pearl--a dancer. I don't see how I can begin to be
anything else now; but I will, I'll be anything you ask me, Harry,"
throwing her arms about his neck, "I will."

He laughed and held her closer still. "I'll never ask you to be anything
else. 'The Black Pearl--a dancer,' that's enough for me. You shall have
all the joy of your gift--its expression. I'm not such a selfish animal
as to ask you to give that up, so that I can keep you--you