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Updated: May 4, 2025
"Look here, Gratton," he said bluntly, "as far as I can see there is no reason why Miss Gaynor should pay the least attention to your effervescings if she doesn't care to. She is a free agent and under no obligations to you." "I'll ask your opinion when I want it," snapped Gratton. "Miss Gloria " "You asked me something?" said Gloria. "Pardon me. I didn't hear." Her aloof reply disconcerted him.
In her disordered mind she had been flung, as upon shoals, to many bleak points of view; she had blamed fate for her undoing, she had blamed Gratton, she had laid the responsibility upon her mother for having allowed her to drift; but always she had looked upon herself as the victim.
But in the end she gave over hopelessly, seeing that Gratton would not budge. And it was so clear to her that he would perish if he lay here. "There's a hole in the cliffs just yonder," Gratton said drearily. "God knows what wild beasts may be in it. But I was going to crawl in there when you called."
The cub was made much of, and finally led off to the kitchen for sugar and a bed in a box under the table. Mrs. Gaynor appeared and was "very glad indeed to see Mr. King again." Gratton, whom King remembered with small liking, came up and shook hands, and looked at King in a way which did nothing to increase the liking. Ben, it appeared, had been unable to come this year.
It became less furtive, more assured. His eyes left her to rove again, lingered with the two couches, and returned to her. "You found King wasn't your kind," he announced. "You have quarrelled!" "From the very beginning," she replied quickly. "He is unthinkable. I would have left him long ago, only ..." "Only there was no place to go," Gratton finished it for her.
Then she forgot everything saving that she and Gratton were alone, that they had been friends, that they were bound in a common fate. She leaned as far out as she could; he was just below now; she called to him. He stopped dead in his tracks; he jerked his head up and stared wildly; his mouth dropped open, and in the shock of the moment speech was denied him. She called again. "You!"
But you know why I did not wait. It was for your sake." Gloria heard him through with a hard little smile. "Nothing is further from my intention, Mr. Gratton," she told him icily, "than to marry you. Now or ever. Please let us consider the matter closed once and for all." His fingers worked nervously at his sides. Gloria chose the moment to lift her eyes again fleetingly to King's.
When, after Gratton had waited and fumed for upward of an hour, she went downstairs she looked cool and pretty, and quite unembarrassed. He flashed a look at her that was eloquent of nervous excitement. "I want to explain everything to you, Gloria " "It will take a good deal of explaining, won't it, Mr. Gratton?"
After a weary time she came to the base of the cliffs. Gratton was not a dozen paces from her. He looked to her like a sick man, gaunt, hollow-eyed; unkempt, unshaven, as she had never seen him before, he was like some caricature of the immaculate Gratton of San Francisco. He did not move but looked at her in a strange, bewildered fashion.
Gratton gnawed at his knuckles, Brodie puffed steadily, and the two aggressors accepted windy denial as sign of guilt. One of them sprang forward and struck; the little man whipped out a revolver and fired.
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