Her eyes closed with the delight of that moment. She felt her
resistance breaking down, the weakening and softening of her
resolutions. Was she at last to know the splendor of loving and giving?
"Ain't you played with me long enough, Pearl?" his voice was in her ear,
a broken, husky whisper. "What's the use? Why, of course," grasping at
his usual self-confidence, "I'm a fool to get scared this way. You've
showed me that you care, you have, honey; and I guess," with a nervous
laugh, "the Black Pearl hasn't got any damn fool scruples such as I've
been frightening myself out of my skin by attributing to her."
Imperceptibly, almost, her whole body stiffened. Her soft, relaxed,
yielding attitude was gone. But she remained silent, the same ominous,
brooding silence that the desert had held before the storm, had Hanson
but noticed. He did not. He was still pleading: "Why all the time you
been keeping me on the anxious seat, I been telling myself that the
Black Pearl--"
"Yes, the Black Pearl," she interrupted him with her low, unpleasant
laugh. "Don't you care a little that I got that name, Rudolf?"
"Care!" He wound his arms about her now and buried his face in the great
waves of her inky, shining hair, wildly kissing the nape of her neck;
but with a deft twist of her lithe body she slipped almost away from
him, although his arms still held her. "Care? Of course I care. But
what's that got to do with it when I love you like I do? Pearl, if you
were a good deal blacker than you're painted it wouldn't make any
difference to me.
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