"It ain't me that's merciless," she returned, apparently unmoved, "it's life. You think my dancing's great, so does everybody; so it is. Well, it didn't grow. I made it." Here she lifted her head with pride, and folded her arms on her chest. "Maybe you don't think it took some training. Maybe you don't think it took some will and grit when I was a little kid to keep right on at my exercises when I ached so bad that the tears would run down my cheeks all the time I was at them. My mother knew that you had to begin young and keep at 'em all the time, but mom never would have had the nerve to keep me to it. She used often to cry with me.
"When I was a girl I'd liked to have had a good time, just in that careless way like other girls, but I gave that up, too, so's I could work at my dancing. When I'd get tired and blue I'd look at the stones I'd begun to collect with the money I'd earned. I'm hard, yes, I guess you're right. I guess you got to have a streak of hardness in you to be one of the biggest dancers in the world, or to be the biggest anything, but"—here she ran across the room and was down on her knees beside his chair—"I'm not hard any longer. Those jewels there," pointing to the table behind her, "they don't mean a thing to me any longer, nor my dancing, either, nor money, nor applause, nor anything in the world but you."
He shrank away from her as if he feared the subduing magnetism of her touch. "The useless cog to drop away when you get tired of him! I told you your life was all rounded and complete."
"It's not," she cried passionately, "without love. Without your love. I've got it and you can't take it away from me."
He brushed the wing of hair back from his pallid face. "My love!" His voice seemed to drip the bitterness of gall. "Where in heaven's name is there any place for it?"
"There isn't much room for anything else," she returned, "and that's the truth. I've told you that all those things that you say make my life complete, don't mean that," she snapped her long fingers, "not that to me any more. I've told you that I'd give them all up for you if you asked me, but," and here she swept to her feet, as if upborne by a rush of earnestness so intense and deeply felt that it was in itself a passion, "but I'll give 'em up, for it's a lot to give, for the man I know you are and—and not for the man that's been shirking life."
Since the first moments after she had begun to voice her experiences, and what he called her merciless philosophy, he had crumpled down in his chair, and when she had sprung up, he had risen perfunctorily and wearily to his feet, but at her last words he had straightened up as if involuntarily every muscle grew tense, an outward and visible indication of his mental attitude. Inherited and traditional pride was in the haughty and surprised uplift of his head; a bright flush had risen on his cheek and his eyes sparkled with a thousand wounded and angry reflections.
Whether or not she had intended to produce this effect by her words, she was undaunted by it, and went on: "José tells me that you got a big place in England, just waiting for you to come and claim it, and you quit it and everything there because a girl turned you down. It was sure a baby act."
"I—" he began to interrupt her. There were few men who would have cared to ignore that chilled steel quality of Seagreave's voice or, for the matter of that, the chilled steel look on his face.
But there were certain emotions the Pearl had never known, and they included remorse and fear. "I ain't finished yet," the gesture with which she imposed his silence held her accustomed languor. "I got to say that the man—that's you—that fought all through the Boer war was no shirker, and the man who did some of the things you did in India—you got some kind of a medal, didn't you?—what was it José called you?—soldier of fortune—well, you weren't a quitter, anyway."