had told me," she said, "then I'd been a little better prepared for Pop
and Bob; but I guess they got as good as they gave."

"I know I ought to have told you, Pearl," he said miserably, "and I
meant to, honey, but"--gathering her more closely in his arms--"I just
couldn't spoil those first few days; and, anyway, you drove everything
but you out of my head. I just determined every time it came into my
mind to tell you, that I wasn't going to spoil Paradise with any
recollections of hell. Maybe I was all wrong, but that was the way I
felt."

"No, you were all right, Rudolf," she wound her arms about his neck.
"When the storm came it broke swift and sudden like the sand storm, and
we didn't live it all over beforehand, getting ready for it, and
deciding how we'd meet it when it came, and all that. We just enjoyed
ourselves. Lived and loved up to the moment when it broke, and that was
the best way."

"Gee! was there ever a woman like you!" lifting his glad, gay gaze to
the sky. "Why, Pearl, it most frightens me when I think how happy me and
you are going to be together."

"Are we?" nestling closer to him. "How?"

"How?" he repeated. "Why, we're going to be together first and last;
ain't that enough? It is for me. But"--with drooping head and affectedly
humble and dejected mien--"it couldn't be expected to be enough for you,
could it?"

"Hardly," she looked up at him through her long lashes.