"Yes, Bob's got to do the telling." Pearl confided more to Lolita than
she ever did in her fellow beings. "Oh, Rudolf, this is where you get
knifed! They've been laying for you right from the first. When Bob's got
to do a thing, he never wastes any time; he'll be along sure this
morning. I guess we'll just wait right here and catch him."

Lolita hopped clumsily on to Pearl's shoulder and tweaked her ear. "Hell
and damnation!" she muttered, and then sang:

"Love me to-day,
Love me an hour."

Pearl shrugged impatiently. "Shut up!" she cried, and resting her chin
in her cupped hands gazed over the sparkling, shimmering plain, where
all unshadowed day-beams seemed to gather as pure light and then, as if
fused in some magic alembic, became color. There, the ineffable command:
"Let there be light!" included all. It is only in the silence and light
of the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, that
light is music and music is color and color is fragrance,
undifferentiated in the eternal harmony of beauty.

Pearl's eyes drank the desert, unconsciously seeking there in its
haunting enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self.
Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from the
angle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. Its vast emptiness is
more than full; its unashamed sterility is but the simile for unmeasured
fecundity.

For an hour thus she leaned and gazed, Lolita restlessly walking back