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 José, 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?--