Through narrowed lids she watched him, sitting very still, needle poised just as she had drawn it through. On his young face was an expression of firm decision that she had not before seen there. He looked oddly, now, like his father. There was, apparently, a trace of the Kane iron in him. The situation was of wholly accidental origin; he couldn't have planned it; his first expression, out in the corridor, had been of startled surprise; the decision to step within must have been instant; yet now, suddenly, he meant business. She caught all that.... Here, after all, was a young man who presented difficulties. “Take off those pearls,” said he quietly. “You are in my room,” said she as quietly. “I shall take the pearls when I go.” “You'll have my life to answer for.” “Your life is nothing to me.” “Your own life is.” “Never mind about that.” “I've warned you fairly.” “Stand up.” “You propose to take them from me by force?” “Yes. Unless you choose to give them to me.” “And you expect me to trust you with them.” “Yes.” There was a silence. “Of course you are stronger than I,” she observed musingly. He offered no reply to this. Her thin mouth curved into the faint smile that was as cold as her calculating brain. “So”--said she “we're enemies, then?” This evidently did not interest him. “I think,” she went on, quietly desperate, “that I'll try crying and screaming. I'm something of an actress.” “Scream your head off,” said he, the slang phrase sounding almost courteous in this new quiet voice of his. “There's not a person--alive--that could prove these pearls aren't my own.” Her voice dwelt on that one telling word, “alive,” with an almost caressing note of satisfaction. He shook his head with a touch of impatience. And she was studying him, her quick thoughts darting sharply about---darting in every conceivable direction--for an avenue of escape. She knew, however, as the moments passed and the pale youth stood his ground that there was only one. She had supposed him weak. It hardly seemed that her judgment could have gone so far wrong. “You're cruel to me,” she said softly. “Stand up.” Now she obeyed. He drew near. “I didn't think you'd turn out this sort, Rocky. You liked me at first.” She moved a hand, hesitatingly, within reach of his own. But he ignored it. “Aren't we going to see each other at Shanghai? Are you just going to be brutal with me--like this?.... I'd like to see you.” “Will you take them off,” said he, “or must I?” She turned to him, with curiously mixed passions coming to life in her face.