"How can we go on like this?" His voice was a mere broken whisper. He yearned to her, leaned toward her, and yet refrained from holding her.

"Like _this_," she murmured, and threw her arms about him and laid her head on his heart, her face upturned to his.

"I told you"--so close was she held that she scarcely knew that she was breathing--"I told you--that if I once held you in my arms I'd never let you go."

"You may have told yourself; you never told me before. But I'm content."

"Content! That's no word for this," he cried between kisses. The mounting tide he had feared had become a mighty torrent sweeping away all his carefully built up mental barriers, and with that obliterating flood came a sense of power and freedom. All the youth in his heart rose and claimed its share of life and love and happiness.

"Let me go," she said at last, and drew away from him, flushed as a dawn and rapturous as a sunrise.

"No, never again," and stretched out his arms, but she slipped behind the table, putting it between them. "Sit down," she commanded, "and build up the fire. I want to talk, talk a long time, all night maybe."

"I hope so," he said ardently, and, obeying her, stooped to place fresh logs on the embers. "But what is there to talk about? We've said and will continue to say all there is in the world worth saying. I love you.

Do you love me?"

"Maybe you won't want to say that after you've heard me." She had leaned forward, her arms on her knees, her eyes on the flames which leaped from dry twig to dry twig of the burning logs and on the shower of sparks which every minute or so swept up the chimney.

"You hit it off pretty well when you said that all I really cared for was money and jewels and my dancing and the big audiences and all that."

Her eyes had narrowed so that the gleaming light that shone through her lashes was like a mere line of fire. "You see, I got to play the game. I got to. Nothing but winning and winning big ever's going to suit me. I saw that when I was awful young. I sort of looked out on life and it seemed to me that most people spent their lives like flies, flying around a while without any purpose, trying to buzz in the sun if they could, and by and by dropping off the window pane."

"Nothing but winning will suit you," he said drearily. "You are only repeating what I told you." All the life, the pa.s.sion had gone out of his voice. "And I'm no prize, heaven knows!"

"I ain't through yet," she said. "I never did talk much. I guess I'm going to talk more to-night than I ever talked in my life, but I always saw everything that was going on around me, and it didn't take me long to make out that all you'll get in life is a kick and a crust if you haven't got some kind of power in your hands."

"G.o.d, you're hard, hard as iron!" The room rang with the echoes of his mirthless laughter. "Five, three minutes ago, you were in my arms, soft, yielding, trembling, giving me back kiss for kiss, and now you sit there expounding your merciless philosophy."

"It ain't me that's merciless," she returned, apparently unmoved, "it's life. You think my dancing's great, so does everybody; so it is. Well, it didn't grow. I made it." Here she lifted her head with pride, and folded her arms on her chest. "Maybe you don't think it took some training. Maybe you don't think it took some will and grit when I was a little kid to keep right on at my exercises when I ached so bad that the tears would run down my cheeks all the time I was at them. My mother knew that you had to begin young and keep at 'em all the time, but mom never would have had the nerve to keep me to it. She used often to cry with me.

"When I was a girl I'd liked to have had a good time, just in that careless way like other girls, but I gave that up, too, so's I could work at my dancing. When I'd get tired and blue I'd look at the stones I'd begun to collect with the money I'd earned. I'm hard, yes, I guess you're right. I guess you got to have a streak of hardness in you to be one of the biggest dancers in the world, or to be the biggest anything, but"--here she ran across the room and was down on her knees beside his chair--"I'm not hard any longer. Those jewels there," pointing to the table behind her, "they don't mean a thing to me any longer, nor my dancing, either, nor money, nor applause, nor anything in the world but you."

He shrank away from her as if he feared the subduing magnetism of her touch. "The useless cog to drop away when you get tired of him! I told you your life was all rounded and complete."

"It's not," she cried pa.s.sionately, "without love. Without your love.

I've got it and you can't take it away from me."

He brushed the wing of hair back from his pallid face. "My love!" His voice seemed to drip the bitterness of gall. "Where in heaven's name is there any place for it?"

"There isn't much room for anything else," she returned, "and that's the truth. I've told you that all those things that you say make my life complete, don't mean that," she snapped her long fingers, "not that to me any more. I've told you that I'd give them all up for you if you asked me, but," and here she swept to her feet, as if upborne by a rush of earnestness so intense and deeply felt that it was in itself a pa.s.sion, "but I'll give 'em up, for it's a lot to give, for the man I know you are and--and not for the man that's been shirking life."

Since the first moments after she had begun to voice her experiences, and what he called her merciless philosophy, he had crumpled down in his chair, and when she had sprung up, he had risen perfunctorily and wearily to his feet, but at her last words he had straightened up as if involuntarily every muscle grew tense, an outward and visible indication of his mental att.i.tude. Inherited and traditional pride was in the haughty and surprised uplift of his head; a bright flush had risen on his cheek and his eyes sparkled with a thousand wounded and angry reflections.

Whether or not she had intended to produce this effect by her words, she was undaunted by it, and went on: "Jose tells me that you got a big place in England, just waiting for you to come and claim it, and you quit it and everything there because a girl turned you down. It was sure a baby act."

"I--" he began to interrupt her. There were few men who would have cared to ignore that chilled steel quality of Seagreave's voice or, for the matter of that, the chilled steel look on his face.

But there were certain emotions the Pearl had never known, and they included remorse and fear. "I ain't finished yet," the gesture with which she imposed his silence held her accustomed languor. "I got to say that the man--that's you--that fought all through the Boer war was no shirker, and the man who did some of the things you did in India--you got some kind of a medal, didn't you?--what was it Jose called you?--soldier of fortune--well, you weren't a quitter, anyway."

She stretched out her arms to him and smiled, her compelling heart-shattering smile. Ardor enveloped her like an aura; the beauty and color of her were like fragrance on the air. "That's the kind of man I want to marry, Harry, not a man that's willing to live outside of life and work, and stay dead and buried here in these mountains."

He did not bend to her by an inch. Her smiles and her ardor splintered against chilled steel and fell unheeded. "Is there anything else?" he asked, after a slight interval of silence, during which he had the appearance of waiting with a p.r.o.nounced and punctilious courtesy for further words from her.

She made no answer, merely continued to look at him, but he, apparently unmindful and indifferent to that gaze, lifted his book from the table beside him and, still standing, because she did so, began to read.

For a moment or two she seemed dazed and then, with trembling fingers, she gathered up her jewels and placed them in the little black bag.

This task accomplished, she started with all the scornful grace, the indifferent languor of a Spanish d.u.c.h.ess to sweep from the room, but in pa.s.sing him and noting him still absorbed in his book, her hot blood flushed her cheek, her eyes glittered with angry fire. Her slight pause caused him to look up and, seeing the anger on her face, he smiled amusedly, insufferably. The next second she sprang at him like a cat and slapped him across his insolently smiling face, and then flung Spanish oaths at him with such force and heat that they seemed to splutter in falling upon the chill of the air. Then she flashed from the room.

But the maddening smile still lingered on his lips as he bent to pick up the book her blow had sent flying to the floor. And, still smiling, he stood for a moment caressing the white dents her fingers had left on his cheek. Finally he replenished the fire, filled and lighted his pipe and, drawing his chair near to the hearth, sat, thinking, thinking, the greater part of the night.

Pearl was out early the next morning, and walked halfway down the hill.

When she returned to the cabin she found Seagreave sitting in his chair by the hearth as if he had not moved during the night; his haggard gaze was fixed on the dead ashes of the fire. Without speaking to him, Pearl stooped down and, with some paper and bits of wood, began to build up a blaze again.

He peered at her a moment as if she were a vision, then got up very stiffly as if he had not moved for hours, and began to a.s.sist her, mechanically following the usual routine of preparing breakfast.

When it was ready they sat down opposite each other as was their custom, and made a pretense of eating. With the exception of a perfunctory remark or so the meal pa.s.sed in silence. Pearl evidently had no intention of apologizing for her behavior of the night before. Her manner toward him was that of one who had relegated him to the position of the tables and chairs, and intended to take no more notice of him.

Taking it for granted that that was the relation she wished sustained between them, Seagreave gravely adopted her att.i.tude, and for the next few days if they spoke at all it was princ.i.p.ally about the work that was going on down at the creva.s.se. Never had Harry occupied himself so constantly and so feverishly, for the most part outside the cabin, chopping and sawing diligently at a huge pile of wood, and in his intervals of leisure he spent a great deal of time down the hill by the mountain of snow, watching its almost magical vanishing.

"There is a great crowd down at the ravine to-night," he said to Pearl, one evening at supper. "They are working with torches, and I think they will probably have some kind of a bridge swung over by midnight. I managed to signal to them a while ago, and they know that we are safe now. If--if you want to sit up to-night," his voice sounded strained and perfunctory, "I think you could possibly get over before morning."

The shadow which had fallen upon her face in the last day or two deepened a little. "It will be cold out there at night." She caught at the first excuse which came into her mind. "It will be better to wait and go down after breakfast."

He acquiesced with a nod, but made no answer in words, and soon after he left the room, and she, later, peeping cautiously out from the curtain behind the window, saw him walking back and forth before the cabin.

It was an hour or two later when he opened the door and entered. She did not hear him. She was standing, her elbow on the mantel-piece and her cheek on her hand, looking down into the fire. His footsteps roused her from her reverie and she looked up, in that moment of surprise, forgetful of self and therefore self-revealing. Thus she stood for one fleeting second, holding him with her smile, her whole being seeming to rush out and meet and encompa.s.s him and embrace him. Then her eyelashes drooped long and black on her cheek, and her face was all aflame with color.

He stood still a second, breathing hard. Then from the shadow he hurled himself into that zone of glowing firelight where she stood. A white flame pa.s.sed over his face and lighted his eyes with that burning, incandescent glow that only those cold, blue eyes can show. Primeval, all preliminary bowing and sc.r.a.ping in the minuet of wooing ignored, he saw his heart's desire and seized it, lifting the Pearl in his arms, crushing her against his breast, until she, dazed for the moment, lay captured and captive.

But her second of surprised, involuntary non-resistance served her well.

Harry looked into her eyes and forgot his vigilance; and with a twist Pearl slipped through his arms and was across the room. She stood against the wall of the cabin, her head thrown back, a smile on her white lips, her eyes daring him.

Seagreave took no dares. It was a part of his creed. He was across the room in a step, his arms outstretched as if to clasp her.

But Pearl held him with her eyes until at least she covered her face with her hands and wept and leaned toward him, and again Seagreave caught her in his arms with a murmur of pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.s 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."