with Isobel Montmorenci for a grandmother, and Queenie Madrew for a
mother, and the same kind on your Pop's side of the house. You didn't
have any Sunday-school bringing up and I know it. Then what you playing
with me like a cat does with a mouse for? It ain't fair, Pearl, it ain't
fair."

She turned and faced him now with an impatient gesture of the hands.
Some expression on her face, the set of her mouth, the horse-shoe frown
on her forehead gave her a fleeting resemblance to her father, a
resemblance that momentarily chilled his blood.

"For goodness' sake keep quiet a minute," she cried irritably. "You gave
me a jolt a while ago, telling me you couldn't get free, and I want a
minute or two to take it in."

"But you don't think hard of me for that," he implored. "Oh, Pearl--"
but she had again turned to her contemplation of the desert, and
realizing that further speech might bring her swift anger upon him he
walked hastily away.

Several yards from her he paused and again wiped his brow. "Oh, God!" he
muttered, lifting his face to the sky, "what does a man know about
women, anyway?"

As for Pearl, she scarcely knew that he had ceased to speak to her. She
had been thinking, as she averred, thinking back over the years. She had
been dancing professionally ever since she had been a child. As a slim,
tall, young girl, still in skirts to her shoe tops, her mother had
traveled with her, and, although this evidence of chaperonage irked her,
she had with her quick intelligence early seen its value. All about her