The women's dressing-room was on the floor below. Gloria hurried
down to it.
Two pretty office girls were there, chatting as they combed out their
fluffy bobbed hair, as they rouged their lips ... preparing for the
morning's labor.
They looked at Gloria's tear-stained face curiously, as she came in.
She bathed her red eyes and hot cheeks with icy water. Then she
carefully powdered her face, added a touch of color to her cheeks.
In the mirror, she could see the two girls looking at the expensive
bead bag and gold vanity case she had laid on the marble shelf below
the mirror.
"Don't envy me," she wanted to say to them. "I'm just a working girl
like you are. Only I'm out of a job!"
Out in the street the sun was high, and shining with a white
blistering glare. It was ten o'clock.
The army of office girls had disappeared from the street ... and
those other workers ... the home women, were abroad in their crisp
wash dresses and white shoes.
"I was one of them once," Gloria thought regretfully. "But I didn't
know my luck when I had it!"
... She was furious with herself for going to Dick's office.
"I suppose it tickled Briggs to death when I came out, crying!" she
said to herself between clenched teeth.
Then, with her chin up and her head held high, she went into the real
estate office of Forbes, Forgan and Fargo.
She found her knees trembling, and her breath coming fast with
nervousness as she followed an office boy into the presence of
Ulysses X. Forgan.
He was a man growing elderly. Rather sparse brown hair streaked with
gray, two hard brown eyes with pockets of wrinkles under them, a high
nose, and a mouth like the slot in a gum-machine ... that was Ulysses
X. Forgan.
He had a mind like an adding-machine. He seldom thought of anything
but figures. They were to him what talk and laughter were to other
men.
The one quality he had that made him human was his love of beauty....
He loved it in the impersonal way that the Greeks worshiped it.
And Gloria with her amber eyes and tremulous mouth was beautiful that
morning. Ulysses X. Forgan looked at her as he might have looked at
a painting in a museum.
He hired her. "Worth looking at even if she can't typewrite," he
said to himself. "And she probably can't. The good lookers are all
dumb-bells."
But as the days went by, he realized that Gloria knew her business.
And she began to study his. She would slip just the paper he
happened to be looking for under his nose just when he wanted it.
"I may have been a failure as a wife," she told herself Saturday when
she took her pay envelope from the cashier, "but I've always been a
crackerjack business woman! ... Maybe it's the thing I was cut out
for, after all!"
She had a vision of herself in the coming years, growing large and
sharp-eyed and efficient ... a successful business woman with nothing
to live for but a job!
It was a gray and dreary outlook....
When she went home that afternoon, she took a leisurely bath and
curled up on her bed for a nap. It was six o'clock when she awoke.
Her hair was damp with perspiration, and it curled around her ears
and forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were starry as a
baby's when it wakens from its afternoon sleep.
She looked in the glass.... No, she wasn't the type of woman to be
unmarried, to live alone. She was too beautiful for that.
... Down in the kitchen she could hear her mother at work, getting
supper. She dressed herself in a gingham housefrock and went down to
help with the meal.
Gloria sliced the cold veal loaf, and quartered lemons for the
pitcher of iced tea. She made a plateful of lettuce sandwiches.
"Thank goodness we aren't having anything hot to eat," she said
cheerfully to her mother. "It's sweltering, isn't it? ... Look at
those sandwiches! I'm getting to be some housewife, eh, what?"
She laughed brightly. But her thoughts were anything but cheerful....
This was Saturday night. Carnival for everybody! ... The end of the
long week's work....
All over America girls were waving their hair, and dressing
themselves in their best bib and tucker, to go out "stepping." Wives
were hurrying with the supper dishes, so that they might not make
their families late for the "movies."
Everybody, everywhere, had something special to do.
"Everybody but me," Gloria said to herself, as she sat out in the
porch swing, after supper.
She stared out into the gathering dusk. The stars were coming out,
like polished pin points in the sky above the tree tops.
A Ford car drove up before the house next door, and a man jumped out
and ran up the steps. Gloria heard a screen door slam....
Presently he came out again, with the girl who lived there ... little
Peggy Quin.
"My stars! She can't be more than sixteen ... and having a beau
already!" Gloria exclaimed to herself. "But then, that's not so bad,
when I'm only twenty-one, and married and--" She stopped suddenly.
She had almost said "divorced."
With a pang of loneliness, she listened to Peggy Quin's gay voice, as
she climbed into the little car and took her seat there. It chugged
away down the street....
Then her mother and father came out of the house. They were going
out to do their regular Saturday night marketing.
"Better come along," Mr. Gordon advised her. "We'll probably wind up
at a movie. We 'most always do."
But Gloria shook her head. "No, thanks, darlings," she said, "I'm
too comfortable to move,..."
She watched them go down the street together. What children they
were, starting off on their innocent spree! ... After all, it wasn't
what you did that made life interesting. It was the people with whom
you did them, who counted!
Her mother and father ... they were happy because they had each other.
... Inside the dark house, the telephone rang.
Gloria quivered. Who could it be? Dick, perhaps! ... But no, it was
only Aunt Dorcas, very likely, or Cousin Lulu.
"Hello," she said languidly into the transmitter.
A man's crisp voice answered her. "Miss Gordon?" it asked.
"Is this Miss Gordon?" the voice asked again.
Gloria knew at once that it must belong to Ulysses X. Forgan. She
had given her name to him as "Gloria Gordon" when she started to work
in his office.
"Yes.... It's Mr. Forgan, isn't it?" she asked.
His voice sounded pleased when he answered. "It is.... Thanks for
recognizing me," he said. "I wonder if I could see you for a few
minutes? Perhaps you'd like to go for a little drive...."
Almost without thinking, Gloria answered: "Of course ... I'd love to
go!"
The thought of a drive on this sweltering night was refreshing ...
just to lean back against the cushions of a car, and feel the wind in
her face! It would be heavenly....
"But I can't go! What was I thinking about when I said I would?"
Gloria suddenly asked herself. She was halfway up the stairs, on her
way to get dressed for the drive.
But she turned and went back to her corner of the porch swing.
Here she was, a married woman, going driving with her "boss!" What
would people think of her if they found out that she had done such a
thing! What would Dick think? ... He would never forgive her! But
then, he was through with her forever, anyway....
After all, what difference did it make to anybody what she did?
Nobody cared.... Here she was alone and deserted by every one in the
world! On Saturday night, too!
She stood up, suddenly. "I just will go!" she said to herself.
"I'll have every bit of fun that comes my way! ... What's the diff?"
If she couldn't have love, she could still have gayety!
But her decision came too late. She wasn't dressed!
Just then the headlights of an automobile swung down the street.
They threw their white glare into Gloria's face, as Ulysses X. Forgan
turned his car and stopped it before the little house.
Gloria watched him come up the walk to the front steps. She could
see that he was in a light suit, and carried a straw hat.
She welcomed him from the shadows of the vine-hung porch.
"How do you do? ... Would you mind very much if we didn't go for a
drive?" she asked.
In the light that shone from the hall of the house, Ulysses Forgan
could see that she was in a gingham housedress.
Gloria laughed. "All dressed up and no place to go!" she said gayly.
"That's what I'm not! ... Won't you sit down?"
But he stood where he was, turning his hat in his hands. "Are you
sure you don't want to go for a drive?" he asked. "It's a wonderful
night, Miss Gordon."
Miss Gordon! ... Gloria knew this was the moment to tell him that she
was not "Miss Gordon," but "Mrs. Richard Gregory." But somehow she
couldn't bring herself to do it.
"After all it's none of his business," she thought.
... And yet, it was his business! To work for a man under your
maiden name was one thing. To have him come as a caller ... an
admirer ... thinking that you were unmarried, was quite another.
"Mr. Forgan," Gloria said, and her voice trembled a little, "I'm not
'Miss Gordon.' I'm married ... separated from my husband. I should
have told you, before...."
Even in the darkness she could feel his eyes on her ... shocked and
startled. "You certainly should have told me!" he said sharply.
"It's not my habit to become friendly with young women who work for
me.... And if I had known you were married...."
"Better let me explain," Gloria broke in. "My ... my husband didn't
want me to work. He provides me with money, but I won't take it from
him. So it seemed to me unfair to let people know that his wife was
out earning her own living ... as long as I really don't have to do
it. Do you see?"
He didn't answer. There was a long, heavy silence.
Then Gloria spoke again. "I'm afraid I won't be able to work for
you, after this.... Good-by, Mr. Forgan," she said quietly, and held
out her hand.
He took his dismissal without a word ... just pressed her hand and
went away. Gloria watched the red tail-light of his car disappear
into the darkness.
"Poor, lonely old bird!" she said to herself. "With his sporty
clothes and racy car trying to kid himself that he's still young and
gay!"
She almost wished that she had gone for a drive with Ulysses X. It
couldn't have done any one any real harm, could it? And he had
seemed pathetic in his loneliness....
But no, she couldn't have any men friends ... married, as she was!
... Of course, there would always be men who'd fall in love with her,
so long as she was young and kept her looks. But she never would
want any of them....
There was only one thing in the world that meant anything to her ...
one thing that she really wanted. And that was Dick's love. But she
had found it out too late!
She'd lost it, and it never would come again....
"I wonder where Dick is to-night," Gloria wondered.
... Perhaps he was having dinner somewhere with Susan Briggs.
Gloria thought of the little dinners she and Dick had had in
restaurants. How he had resented the admiring glances of men who
stared at her.
She giggled, in spite of her heartache: "Well, that's one thing he
won't have to worry about when he's with Miss Briggs!" she thought.
"No one would look at her twice. She's as homely as a mud fence!"
There was undeniable comfort in the thought of Miss Briggs'
plainness....