Her thin lips curved in the faintest of smiles as she moved along the corridor toward her own curtained door. But then, as she passed and glanced back, her skirt, in swinging about, caught on a nail; caught firmly; and as she stooped to release it, a string of pearls swung down, broke, and rolled, a score of little opalescent spheres, along the deck, a few of them nearly to Rocky's feet. He stooped--without a thought at first--picked them up and turned them over in his fingers; then, stepping forward to return them, observed with an odd thrill of somewhat unpleasant excitement, that the girl had gone an ashen color and was staring at him with something the look of a wild and hostile animal. She turned then; glanced with furtive eyes up and down the corridor; and swiftly gathering up the remaining pearls clutched them tightly in one hand, extending the other and saying, in a quick half-whisper: “Give me those.” He hesitated, confused, unequal to the quick clear thinking he felt, even then, was demanded of him. “What are you doing with them?” he asked. “Not so loud! Come here!” She was indicating her own doorway; even drawing the curtain; while her head moved just perceptibly toward the room immediately beyond her own where Miss Hui Fei, he knew, would be resting at this time. “Where did you get them?” he asked, huskily, doggedly. There was a long pause. Again her subtle gaze swept the corridor. “You'd better step in here,” said she, very quiet. “I've something to say to you.” Sensing, still confusedly, that he ought to see the thing through, struggling to think, he yielded to her stronger will. She followed him into the room and let the curtain fall. “Give me those pearls,” she commanded again. He shook his head. During a tense moment she studied him. She moved over by the translucent window of ground oyster shells, itself, in the mellow afternoon light, as opalescent as the pearls in her hand and his. Her gaze, for an instant, sought the wide stain on the floor where the Manila Kid had, so recently, wretchedly died; and her instant imagination considered the incomprehensible mental attitude of these quiet Chinese who had, without a word, disposed of the body and painstakingly cleansed the spot. No one, observing them day by day, now, as they calmly pursued their tasks, could suspect that the slanting quiet eyes had so lately seen murder.... As for the youth before her she was, now that her moment of fright had passed, supremely confident in her skill and mental strength. He was, still, little more than an undeveloped boy. And his position, now that he had set up his flag of reform, would be absurdly vulnerable. “Once more”--her low voice was cool and soft as river ice--“give them to me.” He shook his head. “Tell me first where you got them.” “If you're determined to make a scene,” said she, “I advise you to be quiet about it. You wouldn't want--her--to know you're in here.”