Unfortunately for Hanson, there was no particular temptation in what he could offer in the way of professional advancement. She was perfectly cognizant of her own ability, aware that its resources were scarcely developed. Already her field widened continually. She was in perpetual demand with her public, and therefore with her managers.
But she loved Hanson. In all of the love affairs in which she had been involved she had never really cared before, and now only her strong will kept this attraction from proving overmastering. And here came the struggle. The right or the wrong of the matter, the morals of it, did not touch her. It was the clash of differing desires, a clash between passion and this secret, long-cherished pride of virtue.
"Honey, honey," he was back at her side again; his voice was hoarse and ragged, but for that very reason it moved her. All at once the primitive woman, loving, yielding, glad and proud to yield, stirred in her, rose and dominated her hard ambition. She lifted her head a little and, still with it turned from him, looked at the pagan glory of the day. Her eyes closed with the delight of that moment. She felt her resistance breaking down, the weakening and softening of her resolutions. Was she at last to know the splendor of loving and giving?
"Ain't you played with me long enough, Pearl?" his voice was in her ear, a broken, husky whisper. "What's the use? Why, of course," grasping at his usual self-confidence, "I'm a fool to get scared this way. You've showed me that you care, you have, honey; and I guess," with a nervous laugh, "the Black Pearl hasn't got any damn fool scruples such as I've been frightening myself out of my skin by attributing to her."
Imperceptibly, almost, her whole body stiffened. Her soft, relaxed, yielding attitude was gone. But she remained silent, the same ominous, brooding silence that the desert had held before the storm, had Hanson but noticed. He did not. He was still pleading: "Why all the time you been keeping me on the anxious seat, I been telling myself that the Black Pearl—"
"Yes, the Black Pearl," she interrupted him with her low, unpleasant laugh. "Don't you care a little that I got that name, Rudolf?"
"Care!" He wound his arms about her now and buried his face in the great waves of her inky, shining hair, wildly kissing the nape of her neck; but with a deft twist of her lithe body she slipped almost away from him, although his arms still held her. "Care? Of course I care. But what's that got to do with it when I love you like I do? Pearl, if you were a good deal blacker than you're painted it wouldn't make any difference to me."
He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, this time escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her face was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashes sweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the Black Pearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawling inflections were gone; it was strangely tense.
"I guess so, damn it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got a hunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in the desert. Before God, I don't care anything about your past or your present, if you'll only love me for a while."
With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at each corner of the mouth.