She loved best to hear of the little brown girl whom Mark had loved; and that would have told either of them, if they had stopped to consider, that she did not love Mark. Else she would have hated the other, brown or white.... And he told how the brown girl saved him, and gave her life in the saving, and how he had stopped at a little atoll on his homeward way and buried her.... She had died in his arms, smiling because she lay there....
“And the pearls?” Priss asked, when she had heard the story through. “You left them there?”
“There they are still,” he told her. “Safely hid away.”
“How many?” she asked. “Are they lovely?”
“Three big ones, and thirty-two of a fair size, and enough little ones and seeds to make a double handful.”
“But why did you leave them there?”
“The black men were on the island. They were there, and watchful, and very angry.”
“Couldn’t you have kept them in your pocket?”
He laughed. “That other schooner made me cautious. Man’s life is cheap, in such matters. And if they guessed I had such things upon me.... If I slept too soundly, or the like.... D’ye see?”
She nodded her dark head. “I see. But you’ll go back....”