She took a last sip of coffee and rose from the table. "I must go down to the other cabin," she said, reluctance in her heart, if not in her voice.
"I will go with you"—Seagreave rose with alacrity to accompany her—"and get the fires builded. It should really have been done long ago. But what am I thinking of? Wait a moment." He clapped his hand to his pocket. "One never knows what avenues of cleverness and cunning a great temptation may open up." He laughed a little. "On that wild drive to the Mont d'Or I insisted on José removing your necklace and all your rings with which he had decked himself. I dare say it cost him immeasurable pangs, but he had no time to express them. As I was driving he passed them over to Hugh, and when we reached here Hugh gave them to me. He explained that in attempting to give them to you he might be seen, and if he were it might lead to some embarrassing questions."
He drew from his pocket first the emeralds and then the rings, laying them carefully upon the table, where they formed a glittering heap.
"I don't think it is possible that José withheld anything," Seagreave continued. "He would not dare, and I am quite sure that neither Hughie nor I dropped even a ring when he gave them to me. Still I would be very much obliged if you will look them over and see if they are intact."
At the sight of her treasures Pearl uttered an exclamation of pleasure and fingered them lovingly, laying the emeralds against her cheek with a gesture that was almost a caress. "Thank you. Oh, it was good of you to think of them at such a time and rescue them for me." Her soft, sliding voice was warm with gratitude. "They are all here." She slipped the rings on her fingers, her eyes dreaming on them. She fastened the emeralds about her neck and hid them beneath her gown, pressing them against her flesh as if she found pleasure in their cold contact.
She lifted her eyes to him; her smile was languourously ardent; impulsively she caught his hand and held it for a moment against her cheek. He started and she felt him tremble. Then hastily he withdrew his hand, murmuring at the same time a confused, almost inarticulate protest; but Pearl did not wait to hear it. She had risen abruptly and, catching up her cloak and wrapping it hastily about her, had opened the door before he could reach it and had stepped out into the snow.
Seagreave, who had paused a moment to close the door behind them, heard her utter a sharp exclamation and turned quickly.
"Dios!" she cried. "Dios! What is it?"
She had fallen back against the wall of the cabin and was gazing about her with a strange and startled expression. Seagreave's eye reflected it as he too stared about him with a look not yet of alarm but of wild, deep wonder. For the moment, at least, all things were the same. Above them the peaks towered whitely in the sullen, gray sky. On a level with their eyes, the illimitable forests of bare, black trees mingling with the denser and more compact shapes of the evergreens, stretched away over the hillsides, casting their long blue shadows on the snow-covered ground until they wore blurred indistinguishably in the violet haze of distance. Unchanged, and yet so strong was the presage of some unimagined and disastrous event, that when a long shiver ran through the earth Pearl screamed aloud, and, stumbling toward Seagreave, reached out gropingly for his hand.
For the second that they waited the earth, too, seemed to wait, a solemn, awe-filled moment of incalculable change, a tense moment, as if the unknown, mysterious forces of nature were gathering themselves together for some mighty, unprecedented effort.