Gallito frowned. "This talk of yours is nonsense, José; but if there is
anything in it, Harry may understand that any interest he may have in my
daughter can lead to nothing. She is a dancer before she is anything
else, it is in her blood. Harry does not and never can understand her;
only one of her own kind can do that. He is by nature a religious; his
cabin is the cell of a monk."

Again José's eerie, malicious laughter echoed through the room.

"Aye, laugh," growled Gallito; "but you see my daughter for the first
time. You think because she smiles at Harry that she loves him; you
think because she is the only woman he talks to that he loves her; you
do not know her. She is young, she is beautiful and a dancer. She has
had many lovers ever since she put her hair up, and learned how she
could make a fool of a man with her eyes and her smile, and she has made
them pay toll. She always did that from the first." There was a note of
fierce pride in his harsh, brief laughter. "Yes, she would smile and
promise anything with her eyes, but she gave nothing. It is
strange"--the old Spaniard, his austere spirit mellowed by his excellent
cognac, fell into a mood of confidential musing, an indulgence which he
rarely permitted himself--"that Hugh, the child of a woman I never saw,
reaches my heart more than my own daughter does. But Pearl is a study to
me. I say to myself, 'She cares for nothing but money, applause,
admiration,' and yet, even while I say it, I am not sure; I do not know,
I do not know."

Again he admired the glints of firelight reflected in his cognac glass.
"But this I do know, José, she is an actress before she is anything
else."