Chapter XVII

That night Gloria was brushing her hair before the guest-room dresser when she heard a board creak in the hall outside her door.

... Was it Dick? She stood there listening. She was sure that she saw the handle of her locked door turn slowly. Then, a few minutes afterward she was sure she heard the stealthy closing of the door of Dick's room.... Evidently he had gone back to bed....

The next morning Dick insisted upon getting up at his usual time. He announced, furthermore, that he was going to the office.

"If I give in and stay at home, I'll be getting the 'sick habit' first thing I know," he told Mother Gregory when she arrived at seven, bringing an electric pad and a glass of grape jelly for the invalid. "I'll work this shaky feeling off in two or three hours down at the office."

"That poor boy is going to kill himself!" Mother Gregory later told Ranghild, to whom she had taken an instant liking. She was making milk toast with her own hands for Dick while he dressed.

When he was ill, Mother Gregory had a feeling that nothing that any doctor or nurse could do for him would do him half as much good as the food she, herself, got ready for him.

Gloria, reading the morning paper in the dining-room, listened to the conversation going on in the kitchen.

"That's the way he's been all his life ... all ambition, with nobody to back it up!" Mrs. Gregory was saying to Ranghild. "I hope you never fry his food or put much grease in it. Grease gives him indigestion quicker than scat!"

"Yes, ma'am, I know," Ranghild answered in her pleasant voice, "but Mr. Gregory doesn't look sickly to me. He's that wiry kind of person ... if you know what I mean. They can stand anything."

The pantry door swung open and Ranghild came into the dining-room with the water pitcher. Gloria looked up at her.

"Don't pay any attention to Mr. Gregory's mother, Ranghild," she said in an undertone. "You're working for me, not for her. And she's just telling you all that stuff to hear herself talk, anyway."

With a solemn nod Ranghild went back into the kitchen.

A few minutes later Dick came downstairs. Mother Gregory brought him his milk toast with the prideful look of a Louis Sherry displaying a wedding cake for the Astor family.

"I'm not going to sit down with you. I had my breakfast at home before I came," she said. "So I'll just take the paper into the sunroom with me for a few minutes ... if no one's reading it."

She rustled blandly away.

Gloria could feel Dick's eyes on her. She did not look up, but tapped her egg and buttered her toast with pretended absorption.

"Gloria," he said at last. She raised her eyes. Dick was white and haggard.

"Dick, you're crazy to try to go to the office, to-day," she said. "Why don't you stay home and rest? Dr. John will have a fit when he finds out you've gone to work."

"Never you mind about me, Gloria. It's you I'm thinking about, just now," Dick answered in a low tone. "I've been lying awake most of the night thinking about you, to tell the truth.... Look here, Gloria, did you love me or not when you married me?"

"Oh, dear, do we have to go into all that right now? Can't we have one meal in peace?" Gloria's voice was pathetic. "First of all we row about money and maids ... and now you want to raise the roof again, I suppose, about yesterday afternoon. Let's forget it."

"I wish I could," Dick answered. "But it's a pretty serious thing for a fellow to come home and find his wife entertaining another man ... especially a duck like Wayburn!"

He came over and put his arms around Gloria.

"Honey, I know there was nothing wrong about your little party, yesterday. You were bored and you wanted a little thrill, a taste of excitement. But other people won't see it that way. They'll soon be saying that my wife's in love with that cheap actor.... They'll have you in the May Seymour class first thing you know!"

"What's everybody down on May for?" Gloria asked. "I don't blame her a little bit for going around with Jim Carewe if her own husband won't take her anywhere! ... Why doesn't he get next to himself, and see that he's losing May?"

Dick pondered.

"I suppose he's too busy. And anyway, a husband is always the last person to hear rotten gossip about his wife," he said.

He was looking out of the dining-room windows that faced the street, watching the Donberg twins who lived next door. They were running races with their new Airedale pup ... their sturdy legs twinkling past each other like the parts of a perfectly-geared machine.

"Gosh, Gloria, wouldn't it be nice if we had a couple of little kids like those two?" he asked, tightening his hold of her. "A couple of jolly little youngsters who'd race down the street every night to meet me..."

"Yes, and who'd scratch up all the furniture and turn the house into a boiler-factory when it came to noise! No, thank you, sweetie! I'm afraid I'll have to squelch your fond hopes..." She wriggled out of Dick's arms and got to her feet.

Dick, with his hands gripped, stood looking down at her.

"Honey," he said, "you're just cheating yourself when you make up your mind not to have children. Why don't you want them? ... What do you think marriage is for, anyway?"

Gloria laughed stridently.

"How do I know what marriage is for? I didn't invent it!" she cried. "It's not my idea of worldly bliss, let me tell you! I've seen too much of it the last couple of months!"

She walked out of the room.

"I see by the paper that Myra Gail is going to Europe again," Mother Gregory called to her from the sunroom. "My goodness, she must cost that husband of hers a fortune in steamship tickets alone!"

Gloria stretched herself lazily on the chaise longue in the sunroom.

"Well, what's the difference so long as he can afford it?" she asked. "It's a relief to hear of a generous husband once in a while. Most of them are terrible tightwads."

Mother Gregory looked up sharply.

"That's a queer thing for you to say," she said sharply. "I'm sure Dick's generous with you ... generous to a fault. As far as I can see he refuses you nothing you ask for!"

Gloria smiled, exasperatingly.

"I haven't asked him for much ... yet," she drawled.

In that instant she made up her mind that she was going to ask him for something, though ... a trip to Europe to shop in Paris with Myra Gail!

Ranghild opened the glass doors of the sunroom.

"Mrs. Seymour on the telephone, ma'am," she said to Gloria.

May's voice was tearful.

"Have you been asked to join this big new club they're starting ... the Home Women's Club, it's called?" she asked.

Gloria said she had.

"Well, I haven't!" May almost shrieked into the telephone. "I think I'm the only clubwoman in town who's been left out. Everybody I know is joining but me..."

She broke down completely. Gloria could hear her wildly sobbing. She had not known that May could take a snub this way. May had always seemed to be hardened against the unkind things that were said about her and her love affair with Jim Carewe.

"Let 'em talk!" she had always told Gloria, recklessly. "When they're talking about me and Jim they're giving somebody else a rest!"

And she had shown the world of gossips a shining armor of defiance. But now that armor was utterly gone. May was defenseless, suddenly, in the face of this new snub.

"Oh, I know what's the matter with the old hens who started the club," May went on presently in a choky voice. "They think I'm absolutely beyond the pale because I lunch downtown with Jimmy once or twice a week. They might know that there's nothing to the whole thing by the frank, open way we see each other.... Why, you know there's nothing wrong between me and Jim, don't you, Gloria?"

"Of course, I do!" Gloria said indignantly. She was very glad that she had been asked to join, however. For the first time since she had known her, Gloria had a warm friendly feeling for Mother Gregory, who had managed to get her into the club.

"Well, then, for the love of Maud, go to your mother-in-law, and do what you can for me. She's the head of the membership committee, I hear," May went on more calmly. "Tell her I'm through with Jim Carewe, if you like. That ought to fetch her!"

"But are you?" Gloria asked, cautiously.

"I—I guess so," May answered. "I've just made up my mind that the game isn't worth the scandal! ... After all, seeing Jim or any other man once in a while isn't worth the loss of my rep ... my good name, is it? ... You've got to play the women's game their way in this world, Gloria, or they won't let you play at all, do you know it? ... Now do your best for me with Dick's mother, won't you? I've just got to get into that club!"

Gloria promised she would.