The game of challenge and elusion on her part, of perpetual
and ever more ardent advance on his. He was interested, she knew that,
but, as she felt with a surge of surprise, not in the way she had always
encountered and had learned to expect.
"Isn't it strange," she realized that he was speaking again, "that I
haven't been drawn to the desert, because so many have had to turn to
it? I have only seen it from traveling across it, and then it repelled
me, perhaps it frightened me." He seemed to consider this.
For the moment Pearl forgot the inevitable game. "Frightened you!" she
cried. "It is the mountains that frighten me; but the desert is always
different. It--" she struggled for expression, "it is always you."
Something in this seemed to strike him. "Perhaps I have that to learn."
Again he meditated a few moments, then looked up with a smile. "You must
tell me all that you find in the desert and I will tell you all that I
find in the mountains. It will be jolly to talk to a woman again." He
spoke with a satisfaction thoroughly genuine.
She glanced at him suspiciously. She was uncertain how to meet this
frank acceptance of comradeship, free yet from the intrusion of sex.
"Maybe," she acquiesced a little doubtfully. Then she drew her brows
together. "I don't want to learn anything about the mountains," she
cried, all the heaviness and the dumb revolt of her spirit finding a
voice. "And I don't want ever to go back to the desert again; and I
don't even want to dance," looking at him in a sort of wild wonder as if
this were unbelievable, "not even to dance.
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