“Then,” Hanson looked from one to the other, but spoke to Pearl, “you ain’t brother and sister?”

“No,” said Pearl, and it disturbed Hanson more than he would have dreamed to notice the change in voice and manner.  The warm, provocative, inherent coquetry was gone from both smile and eyes; instead of a soft, alluring girl ready to play with him a baffling, blood-stirring game of flirtation, she was again the sphynx of last night, whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the scarlet curves of her mouth its eternal, secret enigma.

“We are brother and sister.”  Hugh edged along the step until he could lay his head against Pearl’s knee.  “But we’re not blood relations, if you’re curious to know.”  The insolence of his tone was barely veiled.  “My mother was a circus woman that Mrs. Gallito knew.  She deserted me when I was a baby, and Mrs. Gallito has been all the mother I ever had or wanted, and Pearl the only sister.  I was born blind.”

“Oh, Hughie,” remonstrated Pearl, “you’ve got no call to say that.  He don’t see with his eyes,” she turned to Hanson, “but I never saw anybody that could see so much.”

“How’s that?” asked Hanson easily.  He was used from long experience to the temperamental, emotional people of the stage, and he had no intention of being daunted by any moods these two might exhibit.

“Hughie, what color are Mr. Hanson’s clothes?” asked Pearl.

Still with a petulant, disdainful expression, the boy leaned forward and ran his long, slender fingers with their cushioned tips over Hanson’s coat.  “Brown,” he replied indifferently.

“He can tell you the color of every flower in the garden, just by touching them,” explained Pearl.  “He knows all the different kinds of birds just by the whirr of their wings.  He can tell the color of every dress I wear.  He—­”

But Hugh had risen.  “I don’t like you to tell strangers about me,” he cried with passionate petulance, “and you know it.  I’m going to find mother.”

“Well, tell her that Mr. Hanson’s here,” called Pearl after him, unaffected by his outburst.  “He hasn’t taken a shine to you,” she remarked frankly to Hanson.

Again he was disturbed to notice that she seemed to give this obvious fact some weight.  She had rested her chin on her hand and was gazing meditatively at the gay garden.  A shadow of disappointment was on her face, and more than a touch of it in her voice.

“That don’t bother me,” affirmed Hanson confidently.  “All that I’m caring about is whether some one else shares his opinion.”  His bold, gay eyes looked straight into hers.

“I wonder who?” drawled Pearl.  The gleam of her eyes shining through narrowed lids and black, tangled lashes flicked him like the tang of a whip.  “Maybe you mean Lolita?”

The parrot, which had perched on her shoulder and was tweaking her ear, now hearing its name, looked up, fluttered its wings, and called out in a gruff, masculine voice:  “Mi jasmin, Pearl.  Mi corazon.”