Gloria stood looking out of the window into the darkening street for
a long time. She was actually sick with disappointment.... All day
she had been dreaming of Europe, of Paris, of the shops there.
And now she was not to go! ...
When Ranghild struck the dinner-gong, she did not go down.
Early the next morning while Gloria and Ranghild were busily
unpacking the wardrobe trunk, the front doorbell rang three times.
"That's Mrs. Seymour's ring. Ask her to come up here, please,
Ranghild," Gloria said.
Sure enough it was May.
May triumphant! In a new spring suit and a felt hat crowned with
lilacs! She was freshly rouged and powdered. And there was a
flicker of humor in her green eyes.... In short, May was herself
again!
"Ah, hah, you thought I'd be in sackcloth and ashes, didn't you?" she
asked Gloria in her impudent way, "just because I'd had a turndown
from a club of miserable old frumps? Not on your eyebrow pencil!
Those dames can't high-hat me, dearie.... I don't want to belong to
their little group of serious thinkers."
May sat down before Gloria's dressing-table and rubbed some perfume
under her pointed chin. She grinned impishly.
"Are you going to join? I don't exactly see you in a Home Women's
Club," she said. "You're hardly a homekeeping type, Gloria. I wish
you wouldn't join.... I think you owe it to me not to! Just to show
those women that they can't snub me, and get away with it!"
Gloria set her lips firmly.
"I've promised Mother Gregory I'd join," she said. She had no
intention of being an outcast along with May. There were points
where friendship ceased. This was one of them!
"I thought you didn't care a darn whether you got into the club or
not, anyway," Gloria went on. "You just said you didn't!"
May bit her lip.
"That was pure bunk," she confessed. "Whistling in the dark to keep
up my courage."
May wiped her eyes and blew her nose loudly. Gloria could see that
she was having hard work to fight back the tears in her eyes.
"Between you and me, Gloria," she said shakily, "it's all but killed
me to hear that they didn't want me in that club.... I never used to
care what women said about me, but this got my goat, somehow. You
take it from me, it's no use trying to buck other women. They've
laid down certain lines, and unless a girl follows them, they'll get
her ... they've almost got me.
"Why, this morning when Jim phoned I wouldn't even let him talk to me
... 'fraid the phone girl might be listening in. And, cross my
heart, there never has been anything really wrong between me and Jim
... just a little foolishness."
Gloria was sure that May was telling the truth.
"I came in to ask you to go downtown with me, but I can see you're
too busy," May said naturally, after a minute or two. "Don't forget
that I'm having the card-club Thursday, will you? It's the last time
we'll all see our loving enemy, Myra Gail, before she goes away next
week."
"I thought you liked Myra," Gloria said, surprised
"Yeh, I love her the way you do!" May retorted, making little claws
of her two hands. "But just the same I'd rather have her for a
friend than an enemy ... and she's a friend of all these club women
who've iced me, besides!"
May picked up a hand mirror and studied her face.
"Ye gods, I believe I'm getting a line between my eyebrows!" she
cried, "or is it just a shadow? ... By the way, isn't this hat of
mine the cat's kanittens! I spent all the money for the butcher's
bill on it.... There's one place where I can knock the rest of the
women for a Chicago loop, anyway ... in my clothes."
Gloria's smile pitied May. She knew that May was far from being
well-dressed. Her hat was too garish, her tan shoes too tan, her
thin stockings too thin.
Myra Gail was the best-dressed woman in town, when it came to that.
With a pang, Gloria thought of Paris and the clothes Myra would bring
home from Paris....
After May had gone, she went back unhappily to the job of unpacking
the trunk that was destined not to cross the ocean in the hold of a
French boat! ... How stingy Dick was not to let her go with Myra!
That afternoon a letter came ... a large white envelope with
handwriting that had a certain dash, a careless charm.
Gloria knew, somehow, that it was from Stanley Wayburn before she
looked at it. A thrill ran through her as she opened it.
"Russet, dear," it said. "There's so much I want to say to you. And
yet when I come to write it, it isn't much ... just this; I must see
you! When? Where? Make it soon. Phone me."
No name was signed to the little note. Gloria didn't like that. It
seemed cowardly not to sign one's name to a letter.... She would
have liked Stan to run chances for her.
But then, she knew he never would. He never had. "Safety First."
That was his motto.
She tore the paper up and threw it into the waste basket. Then,
fearful lest Ranghild might piece it together and read it, she took
the torn pieces downstairs and burned them in the living-room grate.
After that she ran upstairs to her room, bolted the door, and
telephoned Stanley Wayburn.
An hour later the two of them were together ... speeding along the
lonely country roads west of the town, in the car that had been
Gloria's birthday gift from Dick.
Gloria's heart was like a wild bird suddenly freed from the cage that
had bruised its wings.
The eyes she turned to Wayburn were starry with happiness, and wet
with tears of relief at seeing him again.
"I've missed you so!" she said. Wayburn's arms went around her like
a vise. He kissed her hungrily. Gloria closed her eyes.
"Look out!" Stan yelled. He grabbed the steering wheel just in time
to keep them from swerving off the road into the ditch that ran along
it.
Gloria straightened her hat, and took a tighter hold on the wheel.
"Well," she sighed, "if I have to die in an automobile accident, I'd
rather be with you at the time than any one else in the world!"
Stan smiled grimly.
"I'm not so keen on dying just now, so keep your eyes on the road,"
he said ... Under his harshness, Gloria drooped like a flower.
It was blue dusk when they drove back into town. The street-lamps
made golden pools in the wet streets.
Gloria drove the car into a dark and lonely side-street to let
Wayburn out. A few days ago this precaution would never have
occurred to her. But since May had been blackballed by the Home
Women's Club Gloria was afraid of people and the things they might
say ... about her and Stan.
"Will you meet me day after to-morrow ... same time and place?" Stan
asked, opening the door of the machine.
Gloria shook her head.
"Can't," she said. "That's Thursday. I've promised May I'd go to
the card-club meeting that day."
She longed to ask him why he couldn't meet her the next afternoon.
But she hadn't the courage.... She had a miserable conviction that
there was a woman mixed up in everything Stan did, every engagement
he had.
"Search for the woman," and you often found Stan, at the same time!