Chapter XXVI

That night Gloria sat for a long time before her mirror.

"How long am I going on like this?" she asked her own face, as it glimmered at her from the silver depths of the looking-glass.

She couldn't go on being Dick's wife! Not while she felt as she did about Stanley Wayburn, at any rate. That much was certain.

She found herself facing a problem that women have faced since this world began.

She was chained to one man. And she was sure she loved another!

What was she going to do about it? Wasn't there some way out of it? There must be!

She knew Dick would never let her go without a struggle.

Of course, she could always go back to work.

But she shuddered at the thought of getting up at seven every morning, of gulping down a cup of coffee, and dashing downtown to hammer her fingers off on a typewriter all day.

Ugh, she had had enough of that! It was worse than housework.

That wasn't what she wanted to do. Not by a long chalk!

There was a verse pasted on her mirror. Gloria raised her eyes to read it, although she knew it by heart:

That was Gloria's creed. She believed in getting all the happiness there was ... to the last drop! She simply was not going to be harnessed to hard work and dullness if there was any way out!

She wanted laughter, dancing, music—the jazz of life. In her mind, Stanley Wayburn stood for those things.

When she thought of Dick she thought of meals to be cooked, socks to be darned, bills to be paid, long dull evenings by the living-room fire. He stood for Marriage.

... And Gloria was sick and tired of married life.

"If I'd only known what it was like, I'll bet a hat I'd still be single!" she said to her face in the glass. It looked back at her with brilliant, unhappy eyes.

Gloria was struck again with the fact of her own good looks.

Why, she didn't need any man! Not Dick, or Stan Wayburn, either! ... Her face was her fortune!

Why should she be a household drudge, or an office hack, either? With a face like hers?

She could carve out a future for herself ... Just as Kit Cameron had! On Broadway. That street of stars!

Gloria snapped out her light and went to bed.

Against the darkness of her room she seemed to see her name in electric lights above the doors of a theater ... "Gloria Gordon Gregory."

Yes, if worse came to worst, she could go on the stage to earn her own living! ... Kit was in New York. She could show her the ropes!

Gloria smiled as she closed her eyes and dropped off to sleep.

The next morning Dick was not so well.

"Something seems to have upset him. He'd better stay in bed all day and rest," Mrs. O'Hara said to Gloria at breakfast. "This is the day I have my afternoon off duty, too. So perhaps you'd better sit with him this afternoon, Mrs. Gregory."

Gloria had come downstairs hatted to go out. She drained her coffee cup and stood up.

"All right, I'll be home early," she answered. "I'm just going to run over to Mrs. Seymour's for a little while."

She found May having breakfast at one end of the dining-room table. The morning paper was propped against the coffee pot and a half-smoked cigarette was burning itself away at the edge of her plate.

"Have a cup of coffee?" May asked.

"No, thanks, I've just had breakfast," Gloria replied.

She came to the point at once.

"May, you don't happen to have any money knocking around that you want to lend to a friend in need, do you?" she asked bluntly.

May shook her head in a puzzled sort of way.

"Heavens, no. I haven't one sou to lend anybody," she said. "I've just been wondering when they're going to throw me into jail for debt.... What do you need money for?"

Gloria flushed. She bit off a hangnail, nervously, before she answered. She wondered if May divined that she wanted the money for Wayburn.

"What does anybody need money for?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

May sat looking at her with narrowed eyes.

"Give me the low-down on this," she said at last. "If you just wanted this money for clothes you'd ask Dick for it, I know. What mischief have you been up to?..."

She broke off suddenly. Gloria's face was red with anger.

"Well, you're a fine friend!" she cried. "I lower my pride to ask you for a loan. And all you can do is to pry into my affairs, instead of lending me a little. You make me sick, May!"

That afternoon when Gloria went into Dick's room to sit with him, he held a letter out to her.

"Would you mind running down to the corner to mail this for me?" he asked.

Gloria looked at the letter. It was addressed in Dick's fine dashing hand to "Miss Susan Briggs."

Gloria went into her own room after her wraps to go out and mail Dick's letter.

The day was cold and there was a tiny jet of steam hissing out from the radiator beside her dressing table.

It gave Gloria a sudden idea.

She picked up the envelope and held it against the little jet of steam. The edges of the gummed flap began to curl slowly.

... She would just open that letter and read what was in it!

She would find out what Dick was writing to Miss Briggs about! He had no business to be writing to her anyway.

Didn't Miss Briggs telephone him every morning from the office to tell him how things were going there? If he had anything important to say to her, why didn't he say it then instead of putting it into a letter, for goodness' sake? ... Unless it was something that he didn't want any one to hear. Ah, that must be it! ...

Gloria picked up her nail file from her tray of toilet things. She slipped its sharp point under the loosened flap of the envelope.

Then she stood still, looking down at the sedate syllables of Susan Briggs' name.

She was filled with sudden self-disgust.

What a sneaking thing she was doing! Opening another person's letter!

Gloria flung the envelope down on her dresser as if it had been a live coal. She pressed the flap down tight.

Then she snatched it up and went back into Dick's bedroom.

"Looky here, Rikky," she began. "Do you think it's fair of you to write a letter to Miss Briggs and ask me to mail it for you? Particularly when you give it to me all sealed up for fear I might take a peek at it.... Here it is! I'm not going to post it for you!"

She tossed it down onto the covers of Dick's bed.

"As if I care a snap of my fingers what you've written to your old Miss Briggs!" she added scornfully. "You flatter yourself!"

Dick threw back his head and laughed.

"By Jove, I believe you do care, at that!" he said. "I believe you do!" The thought that she might be jealous of Miss Briggs seemed to please him immensely.

He ripped open the envelope.

"Here's the letter I wrote to her, Gloria," he said. "Want to see it?"

Gloria took the two sheets of paper that he handed to her.

One was a bill for a hat that Gloria had bought two or three weeks before on one of her shopping trips with May. The other sheet was a note to Miss Briggs.

Gloria read it with frank curiosity.

"Dear Miss Briggs," it ran. "This bill is okeh. Will you please send a check with it? Sincerely yours,

"RICHARD GREGORY."

Gloria looked at it dumbly.

"What did you think I was writing to Miss Briggs? A love letter?" Dick asked good-naturedly. "Did you think I was having an affair of the soul with her?"

His wife nodded and hung her head.

"I'm afraid I did," she said in a shamed undertone.

Dick took her hand and held it in one of his.

"Well, you need never be afraid of that sort of thing," he answered her. "I'll never cheat, Gloria. No matter what I do, I'll be honest with you. If ever I find a woman I care for more than I care for you, I'll tell you all about it ... even before I tell her!"

Gloria looked at him thoughtfully with her wide, brown eyes.

"You don't suppose you ever will care for anybody but me, do you?" she asked, startled.

She was surprised to feel the surge of jealousy that swept through her at the thought of Dick ever falling in love with any other woman.

"Not a chance in the world," Dick answered. "You know I'll never care a rap about anybody but you. But I'm just telling you that you needn't worry about letters I write to Miss Briggs or any other woman living, so that you won't worry. See?"

Gloria couldn't answer him. A lump rose in her throat.

Dick was so honest. So decent. He was too good for her!

What would he say if he knew that she had let Stanley Wayburn make love to her? She raised a pointed finger and rubbed it hard across her lips. She felt as though they were soiled by Stan's kisses.

She made a little movement with her hands almost as if she were wringing them. She was terribly afraid she was going to cry. And she turned away and looked out of the window so that Dick shouldn't see her face....

"I'll never cheat," he had said to her. What an ugly word "cheat" was!

Gloria saw now that she ought to have told Dick how she felt about Stanley Wayburn from the moment when he had kissed her in his dressing-room. That would have been the square thing to do!

But the whole affair had happened so gradually ... that she hadn't realized that it had completely separated her from Dick until it was too late.

But was it too late, after all, to put Wayburn out of her life? Couldn't she forget him and try to be a good wife to Dick?

... After all, what were a few kisses, a few automobile rides with Wayburn? There had been no real harm in them—and Stan was going away soon.

Gloria stared out into the street, thinly veiled by gray April rain.

"I'll try to get that money and give it to Stan and then I'll never see him again.... I'll never think of him again!" she said defiantly. It was as if she disputed something with herself.

She put her handkerchief up to her eyes and brushed the welling tears away.

... The telephone buzzed loudly in the quiet room.

Gloria glanced at her wrist watch.

It was 2.30. And two o'clock was the time that she usually met Stan at the corner for a drive or a hike! He was probably phoning to ask why she had failed him.

"Shall I answer the phone, honey?" Dick asked.

"No, no! Let me do it!" Gloria rushed across the room like a small whirlwind and took the instrument from his hand.

"Hello," she said nervously. To her relief it was not Stan's voice that answered.

"This is Maggie, ma'am," the grim voice at the other end of the wire said. "Will you please go up to the General Hospital right away? Dr. Seymour has just taken Mr. Dick's mother there to operate on her for appendicitis!"

Dick's mother! Gloria could scarcely believe her ears.

Mother Gregory, with her bright eyes and the blown roses in her cheeks, was the last person in the world who looked like a hospital case.

"Mr. Dick's father is out of town," Maggie went on. "And I do think some one of the family should be at the hospital when they operate on poor Mis' Gregory.... Please don't let Mr. Dick know about it, ma'am. It might kill him the way his heart is, and all!"

"Of course, I won't," Gloria snapped, as she hung up the receiver.

But how to keep Dick from knowing about his mother, that was the question.

She couldn't go away and leave him all alone in the house, sick and helpless as he was!

And there was no one to stay with him. It was Mrs. O'Hara's day off. Ranghild had gone to the dentist and wouldn't be back before five o'clock.

Suddenly Gloria thought of Miss Briggs.... Yes, she would have to ask Miss Briggs to come and stay with Dick in her absence. There was nothing else to do.

"That was my dad on the phone," Gloria fibbed to Dick. "He says my mother's sick and wants me to go over to the house right away.... Would you mind if I phoned Miss Briggs to stay here with you while I'm gone?"

"Oh, I can stay here alone, can't I?" he asked, after a minute's pause. "There's no need to bother Miss Briggs."

"That's nonsense! You can't stay here by yourself!" Gloria cried. She picked up the telephone and called Dick's office.

Miss Briggs' low, sweet voice answered at once.

"Could you leave the office for an hour or two, and come out here to the house?" Gloria asked her. "I've had some bad news from my mother and I've got to leave Mr. Gregory for a little while. It's your sister's day off duty, you know."

"I'll be there right away," Miss Briggs answered. Gloria was sure she could hear a note of eagerness in her voice.

"Did Miss Briggs say she'd come?" Dick asked.

"Did she say she'd come?" Gloria laughed with cutting sarcasm. "Oh, boy, did she! Why, you couldn't keep her away with wild horses! Her idea of a perfect time is taking care of you for an afternoon.... You flip it from me, Rikky, she has a real crush on her boss! And don't you forget it!"

"Why don't you phone Mother to come instead?" Dick asked, ignoring Gloria's remarks about Miss Briggs. "I'd rather have her. She hasn't been here for an age."

"Oh, she's not at home to-day," Gloria replied. "I happen to know." She had a sudden vision of Mother Gregory in the white operating room of the hospital.

"I've got to hurry!" she said. "Here, put your arms into your bathrobe! And let me brush your hair.... I must doll you all up for Miss Briggs!"

She straightened the covers of Dick's bed and laid the volume of Stevenson's "Vailima Letters" on his bedside table.

"There's your book," she said. "Your darling Susy can sit here with her best bedside manner and read it to you all afternoon in her soothing sickroom voice ... and you won't miss your Gloria a bit!"

And again she was surprised at the sharp pang of jealousy that prickled through her at the thought of Miss Briggs sitting there with Dick all afternoon.

"If there's anything I can do for your mother let me know," Dick called after her as she went into her own room to dress. His kindness was a reproach in itself.

How good he was to her! And she didn't deserve it!

Gloria was ready to go long before the doorbell rang.

When at last it did, Gloria snatched up her coat and ran downstairs impatiently.

"If I'd had any sense I'd have sent a cab for you. Time counts in a thing like this!" she said sharply to Miss Briggs as they went up to Dick's room.

Miss Briggs flushed. She knew that what Gloria meant was that if she had had any sense she would have hurried to the house in a cab herself!

She bit her lip and said nothing.

When she opened the door of Dick's room there was a radiant smile in her eyes.

"Good-by, you two," Gloria said, and was gone.

Gloria ran out to the garage and started the little blue roadster. Two minutes later it was skimming the shining wet pavements on the road to the hospital.

Gloria's heart beat fast as she neared the street corner that had become the favorite meeting place of herself and Stanley Wayburn.

... Yes! There he was! Standing in the misty rain, smoking his everlasting cigarette.

He swept off his hat as Gloria headed her car in toward the curb, and stood bare-headed in the rain.

"For the love of Mike, put on your hat! Do you want to catch your death o' dampness?" Gloria asked, opening the door of the car. "Jump in, and be quick about it!"

"If I'm going to catch cold, I've caught it now. You've kept me waiting there in the rain for almost an hour ... do you know it?" Stan asked. He settled into his seat and shook the raindrops from his pearl-gray hat.

"I wasn't coming to-day at all," Gloria said.

"You weren't coming?" Stan repeated. There was surprise in his voice.

Gloria shook her head.

"No," she answered. "But they telephoned to say that I'd better go right over to the hospital. Mother Gregory's there to be operated on for appendicitis.... I must hurry!"

She pressed her foot down on the accelerator, and the little car shot forward eagerly.

"I asked you to ride with me so I could tell you why I made up my mind not to meet you to-day," Gloria went on bravely. "This is the last time I'm ever going to see you ... or talk to you."

Stan opened the door of the car and tossed out his half-smoked cigarette.

"What's the big idea, Russet?" he asked, laying his arm along the back of the seat. Gloria leaned forward, away from it.

"You see, it's this way.... I've been thinking a lot about Dick and you and me lately," Gloria tried to explain. "I knew I couldn't go on living in the same house with him so long as I was thinking about you all the time ... seeing you every day.

"Last night I made up my mind to leave and go to New York to get a job on the stage ... but to-day when I looked at Dick I saw how much he needs me. Why, he's crazy about me, Stan! It would kill him if I went away from him! So I've made up my mind to put you right out of my thoughts and be a good wife to Dick from now on. I owe it to him...."

Wayburn interrupted her with an easy laugh.

"You can't put me out of your thoughts, Russet," he said. "You can chuck me out of your life ... but you'll go on thinking about me just the same. I know women!"

"Oh, I know you know all about women!" Gloria answered bitterly. "And two weeks after you've left—you'll have forgotten all about me. You'll have a dozen new sweeties. But Dick's not like you, Stan.... I'm the only woman in the world for him. That's why I've got to stick."

She slowed down the car and drove up before the hospital where Dr. Seymour had taken Mother Gregory.

"Aren't you making a mountain out of a mole-hill, Russet?" Stan asked, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I haven't hurt you. I haven't asked you to leave your husband for me. Our friendship's been just a flame where I could warm my heart..."

"Oh, cut the poetry!" Gloria cried impatiently. "You know just as well as I do that we had no business ever seeing each other. There's no such thing as a harmless friendship between a married woman and a single man! No woman has enough room in her life for two men!"

"Well, don't get sore at me about it! It's not my fault that you're unhappy with your husband."

Gloria opened her eyes with surprise.

"Well, if that isn't just like a man!" she exclaimed indignantly. "All you've done for the last three months is to follow me around and make love to me at every turn! And then you have the nerve to tell me it isn't your fault that I'm unhappy with Dick! ... Why didn't you let me alone? I was contented enough until you came back to town."

Wayburn's lip curled in contemptuous amusement.

"I did let you alone, Russet," he said. "It was you who came to the theater to hunt me up, if you remember.... I knew what ailed you. You were bored with married life. You wanted something more exciting ... more jazzy. You wanted a love affair with me. Now, be honest with yourself! Didn't you?"

He leaned forward and took Gloria's gloved hands in his.

"You're just a peppy young Flapper, who got married too soon," he said. "You'll settle down after a while, and be a fine wife. You'll forget you ever knew me."

"Is that what you want me to do?" Gloria asked. "Now that you're leaving town, you're perfectly contented not to see me again, aren't you? You want me not to bother you any more, don't you? You're tired of me."

"I'm not going for two weeks or more," Wayburn answered. "In the meantime, I want to see you just as often as you'll let me see you, Russet.... And, let's not quarrel, any more.... What's the use?"

Gloria opened the door of the automobile, and slipped out of it. Years afterward, when Stanley Wayburn thought of her, he saw her as she was now ... her eyes full of unshed tears, her soft mouth trembling.

"I won't see you again," she said briefly. "Good-by, Stan."

Wayburn watched her run up the front steps of the hospital, and disappear within its swinging doors.

"Along about day after to-morrow, she'll be calling me up again," he said comfortably to himself. "I know women."

He turned down the brim of his hat, turned up the collar of his coat, and went away through the slanting gray rain, whistling "My Flapper Wife."