Chapter I

It was the last night of Gloria's girlhood.

To-morrow would be her wedding day!

With troubled eyes she stood looking down at the white satin dress spread out on her bed.

It had been worn by two other brides ... her grandmother and, later, her own mother.

"But I certainly don't intend to have the kind of life they had!" Gloria shook her bobbed head at the white walls of her room.

... Her dead grandmother, whose work-worn hands had raised ten children!

Ten children! Think of it ... Gloria shuddered.

"Not for me!" she said aloud. "Not if I know myself!"

Of course, Dick might want children. He probably would. Most men did want them. Why not, since they had none of the bother and pain of having them?

They could go on living their lives while the wives lost sleep and freshness caring for the children.

They could rush about, doing as they pleased. For their women were safe at home, chained to the cradle...

No, she was not going to have babies! Not even one!

So that was that!

Then Gloria's thoughts flew downstairs to the sitting room. She knew her mother was there in the old rocker, mending stockings. She was always mending. And still the basket was always full. It held an endless job.

Poor Mother! How hard she worked!

There was nothing for her but housework and her family, year after year. Ye gods, what a life!

... A woman was either a slave or a doll.

But if she was a slave, it was her own fault. And that's all there was to it.

Gloria had made up her mind that she was through with hard work, forever, last week when she had said good-by to her typewriter and her job.

Gloria lifted the old wedding dress from the bed, and put it on a clothes hanger in the closet. But the silk was heavy and the dress slid off into a heap on the floor.

"Mother!" Gloria called downstairs. "Will you come up here right away? I want you to help me with this tricky dress. It keeps falling off the hanger."

Gloria Gordon's mother was a small brown wren of a woman. All her life she had "babied" her beautiful daughter.

Now she hung the dress neatly in the closet. Then she turned down Gloria's bed, and put a hot water bottle between the sheets.

"Dear me, Gloria," she fretted, "I don't know how you're ever going to get along without me to take care of you, when you're married and gone!"

"Don't you worry about me," the girl answered, "I'll be taken care of all right. That's what I meant to-day when I told you I didn't want to learn anything about housework. You see, if I don't know how to do it, Dick will have to hire a maid for me right from the start."

She set her lovely mouth in a firm red line.

"I had different ideas when I was a bride," Mrs. Gordon said quietly. "I thought a woman ought to help her husband."

"I know you did. Your idea of married life was to take care of your husband. Mine is that he is to take care of me!" Gloria shrilled. "Where you ran a carpet sweeper I'm going to run an automobile!

"I've made up my mind that I'm going to be Dick's sweetheart ... not his housekeeper. I'm going to stay in bed every day till noon, and keep my looks and my husband!"

She crossed the room to her dressing table. She leaned forward and studied her face in the mirror.

She knew that she was beautiful. She had red-gold hair and dark eyes and lashes. Her skin was smooth and white as a gardenia. And the forces that had modeled her features had made them clear and fine.

But behind this sweet and womanly mask, she was wildly discontented and eager for life. And Life—with a capital L—was beginning to-morrow with her wedding day!

To-morrow she would burst forth like a butterfly from its cocoon, and fly away—away from this shabby house, and the alarm clock that had wrenched her from sleep at seven every morning for the last two years—away from the necessity of working six days a week as typist for a real estate firm.

And mixed up with Gloria's love for Dick Gregory was an enormous gratitude toward him for taking her away from all this to a life of ease with him.

At least, Gloria intended that it should be ease ... and luxury, too. She was tired of penny-pinching and hard work, dead tired.

A job and a business career were all very well in their way for girls who weren't beautiful and desirable ... girls whom men didn't want.

But with a face like hers...! Then she turned out the lights above the dressing-table.

She climbed into bed, pulled the covers around her shoulders, and sleepily kissed her mother good night.

Two hours later she sat up in bed wide awake, with the feeling that some one had called her.

She listened. No sound in the darkened house.

Then suddenly she heard a low "Bob White" whistle out of doors.

Dick!

She swung her feet over the side of the bed, and flew to the window. There he stood down on the moonlit lawn. She heard him laugh as she threw up the window.

"It's our wedding day," he said. "Ten minutes after twelve! How's my bride?"

"Oh, Dick, how wicked of you!" Gloria said, exasperated. "Don't you know it's bad luck to see your bride on your wedding day before the preacher makes her yours? And besides, what will the neighbors think if they see you?"

"Oh, bother the neighbors! They won't be your neighbors after to-morrow, anyway," Dick replied in a stage whisper. "Look here, I want to kiss you.... I've been thinking about you all evening during that doggoned bachelor dinner..."

With a bang, Gloria shut the window, and went back to bed.

She lay there waiting for the sound of Dick's departing roadster. But there was no sound anywhere except the lonesome shriek of a train in the distance.

At last she got up and looked out of the window. Dick hadn't moved. He was still waiting for his kiss. Gloria opened the window.

"Why in the world don't you go home?" she asked crossly. Dick didn't answer at once. He stood twirling his hat in his hands.

"Oh, have a heart, Gloria," he said finally. "Come on down to the front door for just a minute.... I must kiss you, dear! Think, it's our wedding day."

Gloria hesitated. After all, where was the harm in one little kiss in the dead of night? In another twelve hours they would be man and wife.

"All right, I'll be right down," she whispered.

She put on her bathrobe and thrust her bare feet into slippers. She tiptoed out into the hall.

Halfway down the stairs she paused.

This was not the thing to do! She was making herself cheap ... "easy." The way to hold a man was to keep him guessing. To kiss him so seldom that love-making would never lose its tang and flavor....

A man was a born hunter. He loved the chase. As soon as he got what he wanted he was off at top speed for something else, for somebody else!

Well, she would keep Dick running after her! She would never go to him as she was going now! Never!

She turned and ran back to her room.

"Dick!" she called softly from the window. He came out from the shadow of the porch.

"Darling, I'm not coming down," Gloria said, "I just can't. It wouldn't be right. You shouldn't have asked me to do such a horrid thing!"

Without answering, Dick crossed the lawn and started his car.

Gloria lay in bed listening to the sound of it. She heard it for a long time, and she knew that Dick had driven out to take one last look at the house he had built for her. What a boy he was!

At twenty, she was more worldly wise than Dick, in spite of his thirty years and his reputation as a lawyer.

He was like wax in her hands. She could make him utterly miserable by refusing him a kiss. And when she was tender he would willingly go through fire and water for her! He said so.

... When she did kiss him, she was never thrilled by it. What excited her was the power that kiss gave her over him!

Yes, Dick was mad about her. He would give her anything she asked for. And she was not going to be slow in asking for the things she wanted ... leisure, love and luxury. But above all, luxury!