ig storm into
post-offices, to racing trains, all over the land. Her mother had
telephoned the emergency hospitals! Gloria could have wept in rage,
screamed, thrown herself down and given over to paroxysms of weeping.
But she only sat on, her face whiter and whiter, looking into emptiness
and seeing headlines that towered as high as immense black cliffs. Her
mother had telephoned Mildred Carter, that hateful, hateful,
thrice-hateful Mildred Carter; had confessed that Gloria had gone out
with Mr. Gratton; was gone all night, no one knew where; Mildred Carter
who was as good as married to Bob Dwight of the _Chronicle_! And the
emergency hospitals--Gloria with never a tear coming in her hour of
greatest distress sat rocking back and forth on her chair, crying: "Oh,
I wish I were dead!"

As one hears noises through a dream, long powerless to connect them
logically with familiar happenings, so now did Gloria absently hearken
to Gratton calling from the foot of the stairs. She jumped up only when
she heard him start to mount them. Then, galvanized, she sprang to her
feet, cried to him, "I'll be down in just a second," and ran to her
room. She stood again looking at herself in her glass.

"Gloria Gaynor," she heard her own pale lips say, "you have gotten
yourself into a nasty, nasty mess." The lips began to tremble; then,
with a great struggle for will-power, they steadied. "And," said Gloria
in a cold, harsh little voice, "it's up to you, and no one else, to get
out the best you can this time."

She bathed her face and hands; she rubbed her cheeks with a towel,
determined to bring some vestige of colour back; she took down her hair.
Only then, so distrait to-day was Gloria, did she think of changing from
her boyish suit into a house dress. Her eyes, which had harboured only
bewilderment and terror, now grew speculative. She brought from her
closet half a dozen dresses; chose a certain pink one without analysing
the reasons of her selection, found silk stockings and pumps, and
dressed from top to toe. She would have to have it out with Gratton, one
way or the other--she began to know which way it would be. But always a
girl should be at her best. Also, she decided, by the time that she was
becomingly gowned and her hair arranged tastefully, it was as well to
let Gratton wait for her a while; waiting always, to some extent,
brought to the one cooling his heels a sense of disadvantage. In short,
Gloria had gone through the mo