“Dios,” cried Jose plaintively, “Hughie’s music invites me, even if the Senorita does not.”

Pearl smiled complaisantly upon him.  “The Jota!” she said, and immediately he joined her, making no bad second.  Together they danced until Seagreave came down from his cabin, and then, flushed and laughing, she flung herself into a chair and refused to go on, although he begged her to do so.

“Say, Sadie,” breathed Mrs. Thomas, “don’t you believe I could learn to do that?”

“No,” returned her friend, looking up from an earnest contemplation of various hooks, “I don’t believe that no woman that’s been married and had children and sorrows and buried a husband and is as heavy as a hippopotamus, and stumbles and interferes with both feet like Mis’ Evans’s old horse, Whitey, can learn something where the trick of it is keepin’ up in the air most of the time.”

“You needn’t hurt a person’s feelings by being so harsh.”  Mrs. Thomas’s eyes filled with tears.  “Oh, jus’ take in Mr. Seagreave,” she whispered; “I haven’t seen him look at a lady that way yet.”

“Cert’ny not at you.  He ain’t seem’ no miner’s wives,” returned Mrs. Nitschkan cruelly.

“Father,” cried Pearl joyously to Gallito, “I have lost nothing.  I am not even tired, nor stiff.  If anything, I am better than ever.  Isn’t it so?  No,” as Seagreave still continued to urge Jose and her to dance, “no,” she lifted her narrow, glittering eyes to his, all the old challenge in them again, the pale coffee stains beneath them had deepened, her cheeks held the flush of a crimson rose, “not until Thursday night, then I shall dance the desert for you, and not alone the desert,” she flashed her man-compelling, provocative smile straight into his eyes, “I shall bring the world to you, and then you will find how tired you are of these old mountains.”

He smiled at her serenely, remotely, as one of the high gods might have smiled upon a lovely, earthly Bacchante.  What had the vain and fleeting world to offer him who had so long ignored it?

Then, while Hugh still continued to play, Seagreave followed her to a shadowy seat near a window, whither she had withdrawn to be out of the warmth of the fire, and together they sat there talking until the moon dropped behind the mountain.

Jose, having finished his game of cards with Gallito and the two women, who had now left the table and were examining Pearl’s manton de Manila, sent his twinkling, darting glance in their direction.  “Caramba!” he cried softly, “but she has the sal Andaluz, she can dance!  I have seen many, but not such another.”  And then he crossed his arms and bent his body over them and rocked back and forth in soundless and apparently inexhaustible mirth in which Gallito finally joined him.

“I don’t know what you are laughing at, Jose,” he said; “but it is very funny.”

“I laugh that the Devil has chosen you as an instrument, my Francisco,” he said.