The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold,
spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture
than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily
in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and
appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to
accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuring
resignation.

Flick's heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and give
her everything she impossibly craved. And now it was he who sighed, and
then clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.

She heard the sigh: she saw from the quick movement of his hands, the
sudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle was
on, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his and
thus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shattering
smile:

"You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now,
isn't that so, Bob?" Again she laid her hand on his arm.

He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard. "I guess you know we'll
never quarrel, Pearl. I guess you know that, no matter what you say or
do, it'll never make any difference to me."

"'Course I know it. And you're not going against me now, Bob, either,
are you?" She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressing
gestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turning her face a
little, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.