, Rudolf, this is where you get
knifed! They've been laying for you right from the first. When Bob's got
to do a thing, he never wastes any time; he'll be along sure this
morning. I guess we'll just wait right here and catch him."

Lolita hopped clumsily on to Pearl's shoulder and tweaked her ear. "Hell
and damnation!" she muttered, and then sang:

"Love me to-day,
Love me an hour."

Pearl shrugged impatiently. "Shut up!" she cried, and resting her chin
in her cupped hands gazed over the sparkling, shimmering plain, where
all unshadowed day-beams seemed to gather as pure light and then, as if
fused in some magic alembic, became color. There, the ineffable command:
"Let there be light!" included all. It is only in the silence and light
of the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, that
light is music and music is color and color is fragrance,
undifferentiated in the eternal harmony of beauty.

Pearl's eyes drank the desert, unconsciously seeking there in its
haunting enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self.
Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from the
angle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. Its vast emptiness is
more than full; its unashamed sterility is but the simile for unmeasured
fecundity.

For an hour thus she leaned and gazed, Lolita restlessly walking back
and forth, singing and croaking, until, at last, as Pearl had predicted,
Bob Flick appeared, a fact not unheralded by Lolita's cries; but Pearl
did not alter her languid pose, nor even turn her head to greet him. She
was watching a whirling column of sand, polished and white as a colossal
marble pillar.

"It's kind of early for them to begin, ain't it, Bob?" she remarked
casually.

"Yes." He paused by the gate, leaning one arm on it, and in the swift
glance she cast at him from the corners of her eyes she could see that
his expressionless face looked worn, the lines about the mouth seemed
to have deepened and the eyes were heavy, as if he had not slept.

Lolita had, as usual, perched upon his shoulder, and was murmuring in
his ear.

"Say, Pearl," Flick spoke again after an interval of silence, "I wish
you'd take a walk with me. I--I got something on my mind that I want to
talk about."

"All right," she acquiesced readily, the nicker of a smile about her
lips quickly suppressed. "I'll be ready in a minute, as soon as I get my
hat."

They walked through the vi