difference to me."

He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, this
time escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her face
was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashes
sweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the Black
Pearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawling
inflections were gone; it was strangely tense.

"I guess so, damn it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got a
hunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in the
desert. Before God, I don't care anything about your past or your
present, if you'll only love me for a while."

With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward
like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the
storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a
dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at each
corner of the mouth.

"You fool!" Her voice was a muffled scream. "Oh, you fool! Sweeney could
have told you better, any man on the desert could have told you better.
The Black Pearl! Why, I've been called the Black Pearl since I was a
baby, almost. It's my hair and my skin and my eyes."

[Illustration: "'I'll show you what I'll do.'"]

He didn't believe her, but he saw his blunder at once; cursed himself
for it, and, mad to retrieve himself, began incoherent explanations and
excuses. "Of course," he stammered, "of course, I--I--was just fooling,