Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
She hesitated and listened, her fancies stimulated by his suggestion of storm-driven animals, and sought to peer into the dark. She could see nothing; she heard nothing. Nothing save Gratton's hard breathing close behind her. She got a grip upon herself and made a step forward, paused, extended her arms to grope for a wall, and made another step.
Now she lay on her bed, her hands pressed tight upon her closed eyes, her will set against heeding the throbbing in her temples as she strove to think clearly. Gratton's words rang in her ears. They plunged her into panic. For scores of "friends" and hundreds of acquaintances she would furnish a topic of talk.
She could hear voices downstairs. Gratton's voice, low and urgent; a thin, querulous voice; she shuddered. That would be the justice. Another voice, a man's and strange to her. He said nothing, but twice she heard him laugh, a laugh that jarred upon her nerves. She guessed who he would be; the man Gratton had sent to bring the justice. "Gloria!" Gratton was calling from the foot of the steps.
Gratton stumbled and sagged, staggering like a drunken man. Brodie, with his rifle-barrel not six feet from Gratton's terror-stricken body, laughed again. "Stop!" Gloria shrilled. She broke away from Jarrold's grasp and ran toward Brodie. "You don't know what you are doing. You " "Close your trap, kid," Brodie thundered at her. "Unless you want the second bullet."
There was none; no smoke this morning denoted his camp, no longed-for figure toiled upward toward her. But he would come soon; he must. King had found the gold here; Gratton would know and come. She would wait, hoping for Gratton's coming before King's return.
Now Gratton's voice returned to him; a strangling cry broke from his agonized soul. A hand, wildly outthrown, caught at Gloria's sleeve. "You, there," called Brodie, "stand aside. Unless you're wanting yours too!" Her own heart was stopping, her feet were leaded. She understood what he said she knew that it was to her that he spoke but she wouldn't believe, couldn't believe that he meant that!
Brodie chuckled. "I don't care whose before Gratton's the first time; but whose after Gratton's the last time, that's it! Who are you for, Bright-Eyes? Me or Steve?" "No!" she cried, her hands at her breast. "No! I am not like that! I was not Gratton's; I am ... I am Mark King's wife!" "So?" admitted Brodie good-humouredly. "Well, that cuts no ice; it's open and shut you'd gone back to Gratton.
He had taken advantage of the universal admission that in love as in war all things were fair. The ugliness of what he had done was chiefly ugly because it had lain against a background of commonplace and convention; here, at the time when no considerations existed save the eternal and vital ones, all of Gratton's futile trickery was as though it had never been.
Her voice broke into a scream. "You're hurting me " And now Mark King moved at last. Before the last word had done vibrating through the still room he was through the window, taking the shortest way. Gratton's hand was on Gloria's shoulder; King threw it off, hurling the man backward across the room. Gloria turned to him "Mark!" she cried. "Oh, Mark King!"
In the pale light by the fire, standing so that the blaze was between the five men and herself, she stopped. Until now she had been very white; suddenly she knew that her face must be flooded with bright red; she could feel the burn of it. The eyes of the men seemed veritably to disregard her clothes, to make her feel another Lady Godiva. "Gratton's, then King's, then Gratton's again?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking