ing her face a
little, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.

He shivered and quickly drew his hand away. There was silence between
them for a few moments and then he sighed again and more heavily than
ever. "Oh, Pearl," he cried, "what do you want to make things so hard
for? Let that dog--" he checked himself hastily, seeing her expression.
"I beg your pardon, you don't look at him that way. Let Hanson go. I
know you about as well as anybody in the world, don't I?"

"Better," she nodded her head affirmatively, answering without
hesitation.

"Well, won't you believe me when I tell you that you couldn't be happy
with him. Won't you listen to me, Pearl?"

She looked at him a little slyly out of the corners of her eyes, a
little one-sided, cynical smile on her lips. "We're always so dead sure
what's going to make other people happy, ain't we, Bob? Always can see
what's good for them so much better than they ever can see for
themselves."

Flick looked away from her, down the long, shaded alley; once or twice
he swallowed hard. "It ain't easy to say what I got to," a faint flush
on his cheek, "'cause I hate to talk that-a-way to a lady, especially to
you, Pearl; but I know you; and you can't be happy, you just naturally
can't, with a man that's married for keeps to one woman, and
that'll--God, Pearl! It hurts me to talk like this to you--that'll throw
you over when he's tired of you just like he's thrown over several
others."

She caught his arm and shook it violently, as if she scarcely knew what
she did. "Throw me over! Me! the Black Pearl!" she cried hoarsely, and
broke into a torrent of Spanish oaths. "Dios!" she paused at last,
panting for breath, "you must be crazy to talk to me like that, Bob
Flick."

"I told you how I hated it," he answered, with that sad, unaltered
patience with which he always took her unspared blame, "but I had to do
it. You got to know these things, Pearl, and it's better for me to tell
you than for your Pop to try."

"He wouldn't have gotten very far," she muttered.

"That's just it. You'd both have got to scrapping and screaming at each
other and nothing told."

"Better nothing told, as far as you are concerned," she flashed at him
fiercely, and then lapsed into sullen silence.

"Hello! Hello!" Hughie's voice came to them from a side avenue or
narrower path down which he had wandered.

"Hello, yourself," Flick answered. "We'll wait for you right here."

"Bob." Pearl's soft v