Adventure Magazine Cover — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Pearl-Hunger pearls and women value. She had, as thor- oughly as a woman could have it, the virtue of innocence—of such inestimable value, but m the next world, not this. He was, on the moment, a little sorry for her loneli- ness; but what she told him of love had no more effect than if she were a child of seven instead of seventeen. “See here, Gloria. How would you like to go to your mother?” _ “No. I thought that mother was dead. I toved her when I thought that she was dead. I do not love her now. She is not my mother now. She is that woman’s mother. I would not go to her. She left my father when he needed her. I have heard him say to her picture, ‘Oh, I need you, my God, how I need you!’ She went with another man. I hate her. That wo- man you say is my sister has told me. I hate her too.”’ Color had now come with an angered flush into her browned cheeks. She did— he reflected—after all, have fire in her, and a woman’s pitiless heart for other women who had slipped. “Where the and hate?” “What I feel I just feel,’ she answered positively, as if what she said meant some- thing. “I felt that you loved her until you stepped on the pearl. Then I knew you did not love her. I am glad. You don’t love her, do you?” “No!” said Heddon angrily. She regarded him soberly, as if watching to see if there was not something behind that ill-tempered denial that meant “Yes;”’ then, calmly— “Are you going to send me away?” “T am!” “ToSydney. Family there I know about. You'll be well off.” A thoughtful pause; then, with a matter- of-fact firmness— “T won’t go!” She gave him a parting glance, calm and defiant, and walked off, head up, stiffly. During the days that followed she had been just the same as before, rather silent without shyness, searchingly steady in the way she looked at everything and every- body, as if a little doubtful, but prepared against su: ~' 'Though she may have hated M* + -°' oria was not disagree- able «0M Mv." "Ss endly. There was no did you learn about love 73 knowing what went on behind the gray calmness of her wide eyes; and she was as much with Oxenham, and as attentive to his monologic discourse, as ever. “Experimenting on him,” said Heddon. “Won’t go, unh?” he had reflected. “Then she can go to the ——. I'll not be hauling women all over the map for the good of their souls! Silly little idiot, talking of love. She only about ten years old, really—or less.” Now as the blotch that was the Kulico Reefs began to grow and seem a cloud lying low on the water, a thought like the devil’s voice whispered to Heddon, ‘‘Why not marry Gloria?” There would be in that money, ease from the sea, a return to the comforts of life; and as far as women went she was as nearly moist clay as a man’s hand could ever have to work with. Heddon had very little conscious self- respect. He did things by impulse, re- jected them by impulse, and was exas- perated by the tantalizing intricacies of what was right and what was wrong. Why not. The thought whispered to his passive brooding. Anyhow, she would be better off under his care than, possibly, elsewhere. A few more years on unsteady decks, a few more fights of one sort and another, and his joints would begin to stiffen; and‘in the end he would be at best only a knock-about skipper, some day drowned. He had no particular dread of the outlook. He was still too strong to feel what he foresaw. But he toyed indifferently with the thought of Gloria, and pictured what her money would buy. Visualize her as he did, with idle specula- tion, in the dress and manners of society, he saw nothing appealing in the picture. But her trusting innocence was like a reproach. He foresaw that to look into her eyes day by day, after a marriage without love, would make him feel guilty. Something within him, he did not know what and did not try to think, made him throw the thought out » of his head and send a curse after it. Better the heaving decks and stiffening joints, and m the end the unhallowed burial of a storm: Then, unbidden, Margaret Cardan floated up into his mind. Margaret—a pearl. “La gran Margherita.” ‘The significance of her name had not occurred to him before. Pearl! He wondered how it came he had not thought of that? Like other names, it had lost its meaning in common use. There Go DOOK 1e@)