He came alongside her now.
"You're not going to drown too!" he said.
She shook her wet head. Together they towed the exhausted little creature back. As soon as she could walk Pearl picked it up in her arms and strode ashore.
"Don't you think it was a crime for those children to go away and leave him like that?" Her gray eyes, instead of beaming, glowed angrily.
"Are you so against crime?" said Anthony, trying to smooth the water out of his hair.
She did not even take the trouble to answer but became absorbed in tending the dog. It was a white dog, at least its hair was white; but now, soaked and plastered to its body, the general effect was of a cloudy pink with gray spots. It was the offspring probably of a spotted carriage dog and a poodle. Between it and Pearl a perfect understanding seemed to have been at once established. She knelt beside it, and suddenly looking up at Anthony with one of her spreading smiles, she said, "I'm afraid it's awfully ugly."
"It has personality," he answered. He could not but be aware that Pearl's thin dress was clinging to her almost as closely as the dog's soft coat.
"Let me have your coat," she said.
He held it out, expecting that she meant to put it on, for every line of her figure was visible, and every line was lovely. But Pearl was utterly unconscious of herself. She took the coat and wrapped the dog in it, so that only its head stuck out, with its adoring eyes turned to her. As he watched her he found he knew positively that she had not taken the pearls. It was no logical process; he did not say, "This girl is too kind or too generous or too without selfconsciousness or too much at peace." Perhaps it was a combination of all these ideas, or perhaps it was just the miracle of personality; but somehow or other he knew positively and for all time that she was not a thief; that she, on the contrary, was just what in his opinion a woman ought to be. He looked down at the bent golden head, dripping pure drops of crystal. Dyed! What a spiteful goose Cora Wellington was!