She looked back at him with a hard, inscrutable smile, but she did not answer.

Another man!  He couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it.  Why, it was only yesterday that they two had met and loved in the desert.  Again he fell to pleading.  “Oh, Pearl, be like what you were again.  Don’t stand off from me that way, honey.  It ain’t in you to be so cruel and hard.  Come back to me, here in my arms.  Have your spells; treat me like you please; but come back to me.  Oh, honey, come.”

She looked beyond him, not at him, and then ground a little heap of freshly fallen pine needles beneath her heel.

“What’s the use?” she said curtly.  “It’s over.  We can quit right here, Rudolf.  I’m done with you, for good.”

His outstretched arms fell by his side, his jaw set.  “I guess that’s right,” he said viciously.  “Any bigger fool than me could see that; and I’m not going to waste any more time crawling around on my hands and knees after you; I can tell you that.  But you can’t fool me on the other man proposition.”

“I’m not trying to,” she interjected cruelly.

“Who is he?” his voice was ragged and uneven.  “Not Flick, I’ll bet my hat.  He’s been your dog too long for you to fling him anything but a bone.  You’ll never tell me, though.”

“Not I,” she answered indifferently.

“Then I’ll just satisfy myself—­to-night.”

She started and frowned.  “You’re not staying for that,” harshly.  “It’s not safe.”

“Oh, yes, I am staying for that, just to satisfy a little curiosity I’ve got, and I guess I’ll find it safe enough.  I guess you’ve been playing with kids so far in your career, Miss Pearl Gallito; but you’ll find that the old man’s not quite so easy disposed of as you think.  I’ve got an idea that you’ll be down on your knees trying to make terms with him before we’re precisely ‘quit’ as you’ve just said.”

“Bah!” she said.  “Wind, wind.  You can’t frighten me with threats.  Stay and watch me dance all you please.  That’s the only way you’ll ever see me again—­from the audience.”  Without any appearance of haste, she lifted her scarf from the pine branch on which she had thrown it and twisted it slowly about her head, then picking up her crimson cape from the ground, she shook the pine needles from it, wrapped it about her, and without another word to him, without even a look, took her way down the trail.

She did not believe that he meant what he said, she did not believe that he meant to stay and see her dance that evening.  The thought that he would do so had annoyed her at first, but as she walked downward through the wine-like amber air, she realized that she did not particularly care.  Her whole being seemed absorbed in the revelation which had come to her in the first moment of her meeting with Hanson—­her love for Seagreave.  In this new, exclusive emotion, the recent interview and all that had led up to it became to her a mere unpleasant episode, upon which her indifferent imagination refused to dwell.  She wanted to be alone, that she might fully realize this stupendous change in her feelings and in her entire outlook upon life.  As she thought upon it she saw that it was no sudden miracle, wrought in the twinkling of an eye, but an alteration of standards and emotion so gradual that she had not been aware of it.