“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 voice held no evidence of rancor.  “Tell me something quick, before he reaches us.  Tell me true, and I’ll be good friends, honest, I will.”

“You know I’ll tell you anything I can.”

“Then—­then—­is she—­that woman in Colina—­pretty?  As pretty as I am?”

He smiled bitterly.  “No one’s as pretty as you, Pearl.  No, she ain’t pretty.”

“Well, what does she look like?” impatiently.

“Nothing much.  Why, I don’t know, just looks like most every other woman you see.”

“Oh, Bob, quick!  Is she little or big?  Is she kind of saucy and quick, or is she quiet and slow?  Quick, now, Hughie’s almost here.”

“Why—­why,” he rubbed his hand across his brow, “she’s kind of—­kind of motherly.”

Pearl threw back her head and laughed, then she took a few dancing steps up and down the road.

“It’s Pearl and Bob,” called Hughie.  “I knew it a while back when I stopped to listen, and then I heard a bird note down yonder,” with a wave of his hand toward the direction in which he had come, “and I wanted to hear it closer, so I didn’t wait for you.  I can always tell you two by the sound of your footsteps.  Pearl walks in better rhythm than you do, Bob.”