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In his influence on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped the man of genius by head and shoulders. And she loved the strange mixture of attraction and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs the something that wounded her vanity because she could not understand it, and the protecting shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave it freedom to be vain beyond all bounds.
King looked at her sternly and said: "Young lady, we may be up against the real thing right now. Nobody but a fool will do a trick like that." The laugh was Gloria's. Once on their way they climbed almost steadily. The air grew rarer and colder. The snowflakes became smaller, at last a fine sifting like sand particles that cut at hands and face viciously.
"My princess, it is not for me to say he will be 'angry, for how could he be angry with the one he loves to such adoration! He will be sorry and troubled it will put him into a great difficulty! Ach! a whole nest of difficulties!" "Why?" And Gloria's eyes filled with sudden tears. "I would not grieve him for the world!
On gray mornings when the jests of the night before had shrunk to ribaldries without wit or dignity, they could, after a fashion, bring out this batch of common hopes and count them over, then smile at each other and repeat, by way of clinching the matter, the terse yet sincere Nietzscheanism of Gloria's defiant "I don't care!" Things had been slipping perceptibly.
She pulled the low, far-set ears gently. "There was a lovely cat at the hotel," she added with deliberate malice. "He purred grand operas." But in her lap the great cat sat unjealously. Gloria's gaze wandered across the street. She wished she knew which was the District Nurse's window.
King had been quite a merry trio as the morning adventure was being arranged. That first guest stirring would be Mr. Gratton on hand to pounce on Gloria and get her out of the house for a run down to the lake, a dash in a canoe, or a brief stroll across the meadow before the breakfast-gong. Instead of Gloria's terse message for him, she had quite an elaborate and laughing tale to tell.
He marked the shipshape air of the cavern, the parcels which were to-night's supper and to-morrow's three poor little meals, each set carefully apart from the others on the rock shelf. He saw how the firewood was piled in its place, not scattered; how Gloria's bed and King's looked almost comfortable because of the fir-boughs; how the clean pots and pans were in their places.
Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death.... "... Any day next week," Bloeckman was saying to Gloria. "Here take this card. What they do is to give you a test of about three hundred feet of film, and they can tell pretty accurately from that." "How about Wednesday?" "Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you "
Shall I stand back for a girl's nervous whim? I tell you, you shall marry me." Gloria's laughter, cool and insolent, maddened him. He clenched his hands and was swept away by his passion to gusty vehemence: "Think before you laugh! What if, instead of doing the gentlemanly thing, I refused to marry you?
These two questions and the eternal recriminations involved ran through the days. They motored to the Post-Road towns, Rye, Portchester, and Greenwich, and called on a dozen friends, mostly Gloria's, who all seemed to be in different stages of having babies and in this respect as well as in others bored her to a point of nervous distraction.
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