to be ruled; they adored her, but few of them tried to kiss her.
Eugene was puzzled and frightened by these lamb-like lions. Among men, they were fierce, bold, and combative; with her, awkward and timorous. One of them, a city surveyor, lean, highboned, alcoholic, was constantly involved in police-court brawls; another, a railroad detective, a large fair young man, split the skulls of negroes when he was drunk, shot several men, and was himself finally killed in a Tennessee gun-fight.
She never lacked for friends and protectors wherever she went. Occasionally, Pearl’s happy and vital sensuality, the innocent gusto with which she implored
"Some sweet old daddy Come make a fuss over me."
drew on village rakedom to false conjectures. Unpleasant men with wet cigars would ask them to have a convivial drink of corn whisky, call them “girley,” and suggest a hotel room or a motorcar as a meeting-place. When this happened, Pearl was stricken into silence; helpless and abashed, she appealed to Helen.
And she, her large loose mouth tense and wounded at the corners, her eyes a little brighter, would answer:
“I don’t know what you mean by that remark. I guess you’ve made a mistake about us.” This did not fail to exact stammering apologies and excuses.
She was painfully innocent, temperamentally incapable of wholly believing the worst about any one. She lived in the excitement of rumor and suggestion: it never seemed to her actually possible that the fast young women who excited her had, in the phrase she used, “gone the limit.” She was skilled in gossip, and greedily attentive to it, but of the complex nastiness of village life she had little actual knowledge. Thus, with Pearl Hines, she walked confidently and joyously over volcanic crust, scenting only the odor of freedom, change, and adventure.
But this partnership came to an end. The intention of Pearl Hines’life was direct and certain. She wanted to get married, she had always wanted to get married before she was twenty-five. For Helen, the singing partnership, the exploration of new lands, had
