As for those who would have been interested had they but known—­the little group held in compulsory inaction by those white, encircling hills—­they accepted it as a part of the year’s toll, no more to be murmured at than the changing seasons, and as inevitable as were they.  But it was an experience which Pearl had never known, and Seagreave looked to see it wear upon her spirit, and daily experienced a new surprise that there was no evidence of its doing so.  Instead, she seemed to glow hourly with a richer and fuller life, a softer beauty.  But although an intimacy greater than he and she had yet known, would seem to be enforced by this winter of isolation and leisure, she did not, for a time, see as much of him as before.  A constraint, almost like a blight upon their friendship, seemed to have fallen between them ever since the night that she had danced.  Seagreave did not come down to Gallito’s cabin quite so frequently in the evenings, and, according to Jose, spent much time by his own fireside absorbed in reading and meditation; and when he did come it was usually late and, instead of talking to Pearl, he would listen in silence to Hugh’s playing or else engage him in conversation.

But this attitude on his part failed to cloud Pearl’s spirits.  She had seen men taken with this not inexplicable shyness before, and she made no effort to rouse Harry from his abstraction or to lure him from his meditations; femininely, intuitively wise, she left that to time.

But even in her moods of gayety the Black Pearl was never voluble, and her habit of silence was a factor in maintaining the mystery with which Seagreave’s imagination was now beginning to invest her, and during those winter evenings when she would often sit absolutely motionless for an hour at a time, her narrow eyes dreaming on the fire, the sphynx look on her face, more than once he felt impelled to murmur: 

     “’The Sphinx is drowsy,
       Her wings are furled: 
     Her ear is heavy,
       She broods on the world. 
     Who’ll tell me my secret,
       The ages have kept?—­
     I awaited the seer,
       While they slumbered and slept.’”

Thus, more and more, he saw her as the image of beauty and of mystery, and ever more frequently he pondered on the nature of the message of the desert.  But had he come down to Gallito’s cabin earlier in the evening he would not have found her brooding on the firelight.  Usually, she danced, keeping well in practice.  She and Hughie would discuss by the hour new movements and effects, and not only discuss, but try them, and she and Jose, who had a light foot, often gave Gallito the benefit of seeing them in many of the old Spanish dances.

But one evening when Seagreave came down, Pearl was not resting after her exertions, but ran forward to greet him with unwonted vivacity, and drew him toward a window in a dim corner of the room, out of earshot of her father and Jose.