"Sure, kid!" breathed Pearl.
It was after still another dance—she had meantime floated in the arms of a mere mill foreman. This time he led her into the dusky hallway, where open windows brought the cool night to other low-voiced couples. He led her to the farthest window, where the shadow was deepest, and they looked out-above the roof of Rapp Brothers, Jewellery-to a sky of pale stars and a blond moon.
"Ain't it great?" said Pearl.
He stood close to her, trembling from the faintest contact with her loveliness. He wished to kiss her-he must kiss her. But he was afraid. Pearl was sympathetic. She divined his trouble, and in the deep shadow she adroitly did it herself. Then she rebuked his boldness.
"Say, but you're the quick little worker, seems to me!"
For a moment he was incapable of speech, standing mute, her warm hand in his.
"It's been a dream," he managed at last. "Just like a dream! Now you belong to me, don't you?"
"Sure, if you want to put it that way," said Pearl "Come on! there's the music again."
At the door she was taken from him by the audacious mill foreman. Wilbur was chilled. Pearl had instantly recovered her public, or ballroom, manner. Could it be that she had not been rightly uplifted by the greatness of their moment? Did she realize all it would mean to them? But she was meltingly tender when at last they swayed in the waltz to "Home, Sweet Home." And it was he who bore her off under the witching moon to the side entrance of the Mansion. They lingered a moment in the protecting shadows. Pearl was chatty—not sufficiently impressed, it seemed to him, with the sweet gravity of this crisis.
"We're engaged now," he reminded her. Pearl laughed lightly.