"And you," he said, marvelling, "you actually came with a man like King into a place like this!"
"I was a fool," cried Gloria. "A pitiful little fool. Oh!"
Had she been thinking less of Gloria and more of this other man with whom she was now to cope she must have marked a certain swift change in his attitude. 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. "And now," he continued slowly, studying her, "you are willing to come with me."
"Yes," she told him unhesitatingly.
"But," he offered musingly, "you refused me once and turned to him."
"Haven't I told you I was a fool? I didn't know then quite what men were ... some men."
She was not measuring every word now. She meant simply that she was determined to have done with Mark King, holding bitterly that she hated him; that she would go to any one to be definitely through with King. Yet he had time to weigh her words and draw from each one his own significance.
His eyes followed her as she gathered up her few personal and intimate possessions, comb, brush, little silken things of pale pink and blue. A faint colour seeped into the usually colourless lips at which his dead-white teeth were suddenly gnawing. When she saw the look in his eyes, she stared at him wonderingly.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice puzzled.
"What is what?" Gratton laughed, but the look was still there. His eyes did not laugh.
"What makes you look like that? What are you thinking?"
Now it was he who was vaguely puzzled. Then he shrugged.
"I was just thinking how superb you are," he replied, not entirely untruthfully. For his ulterior thought had been reared upon the vital fact of her triumphant beauty.
The compliment was too much like hundreds she had received in her life to alarm her. Rather, it pleased; what word of praise had she heard during these latter days?
His voice sounded queerly, as though his breath came with difficulty. Maybe it did, since he was no outdoors man, and to him the climb up the rocks and the brief journey along the mountain flank was a painful labour. Certain it was that the faint flush was still in the sallow cheeks. Suddenly he lifted his hands, putting them out toward her. She saw again the strange look in his eyes.