She patted his arm lightly and caressingly, and smiled at him again, under her lashes.  She couldn’t help that with any man.  “You’re awful good to me, Bob; I guess you’re the best and onliest friend I’ve got.”

“I’m what you want me to be,” he spoke a little sadly but very tenderly.  “It’ll never make any difference to me what you do or what you don’t do; there’ll never be any change in me.”

She let her fingers lie in his clasp, but her glance was absent now, her thoughts had flown again to Seagreave.  “Goodness!” she exclaimed, rousing suddenly and glancing at the clock, “I’ve got to make a hustle for it.”

She was ready half an hour later when Seagreave stopped at the door.  Hugh and Bob Flick had already gone, her father and Jose had settled themselves for the evening over the cards, and Pearl stood before the fire, a long, dark cloak covering her from head to foot and a black mantilla over her head.  Jose’s eyes were full of longing.

“Oh, that I might go, too,” he cried.  “The Black Pearl may dance, dance, after the spirit that is in her; may express her art, but I, although I grow mad to express mine, must stay mewed up in these mountains with nothing to do but cook and play cards and talk to a half saint and a stale, old sinner.  If Nitschkan and the petite Thomas had not come, I should have died.  Look at those!” he twinkled his long, delicate fingers in the air, “there is not such another pair of hands on a combination lock in all this world.”

Seagreave and Gallito laughed, but paid no further heed to him, and Harry turned to Pearl with a pretense of disappointment.

“I thought I should see a butterfly,” he said, “a butterfly that had flown up from the land of eternal summer, and you’re only a chrysalis.”

“It’s too cold for butterflies up here,” she laughed.  “Wait until I get down to the warm hall.”  But although she returned his banter, she did not look at him, her eyes were downcast, and on the drive down the hill she scarcely spoke.  Seagreave was one of those rare persons who respect another’s mood of silence, and consequently he did not notice this new constraint which had overfallen her.

The hall, lighted with bull’s-eye lanterns, was crowded with people, every one of the chairs taken and every inch of standing room occupied.  There was no platform, but the space upon which Pearl was to dance was screened off by red curtains.

But even before she entered the little dressing booth prepared for her, she hastened to peep through the curtains, scanning the audience with an eager eye.  Her face fell as she saw that Hanson, true to his promise, was there, and on one of the front seats, not far from Seagreave and Bob Flick, who were sitting together.  His eyes were dull, his face flushed, and he lurched flaccidly in his chair; he had been drinking heavily all day.

He was wondering dully as he sat there if she would enter in the same indifferent manner that she had adopted the first night he had seen her down in the desert.  Probably she would; it had been very effective.