then he lifted his head,
which he had bent sidewise the better to hear their almost soundless
footsteps.

Pearl, seeing that her interview with Flick was soon to be interrupted,
stopped short in the path and laid one hand detainingly upon his arm.
"Bob," she said, in her softest tone, "Bob, you and I have been pals for
a good while; you aren't going against me now?"

He stopped, obedient to her touch, and looked at her unwillingly. He
could always hold to his resolution in the face of her anger, but to
withstand her when she chose to coax! That was another and more
difficult matter. But if he met her gaze reluctantly there was no
wavering in either his glance or his voice.

"I'm going to save you from Hanson, Pearl," he paused for the fraction
of a second, "by any means I got to use."

She flashed one swift, violent glance of resentment, and then
immediately controlled herself, as she could always do when she chose
and when she was playing to win; so now she cast down her eyes and
sighed.

The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold,
spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture
than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily
in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and
appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to
accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuring
resignation.

Flick's heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and give
her everything she impossibly craved. And now it was he who sighed, and
then clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.

She heard the sigh: she saw from the quick movement of his hands, the
sudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle was
on, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his and
thus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shattering
smile:

"You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now,
isn't that so, Bob?" Again she laid her hand on his arm.

He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard. "I guess you know we'll
never quarrel, Pearl. I guess you know that, no matter what you say or
do, it'll never make any difference to me."

"'Course I know it. And you're not going against me now, Bob, either,
are you?" She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressing
gestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turn