Still, dominated subconsciously by the thought which had brought her to the telephone, Gloria managed before the connection was broken to beg her mother to come immediately to her at the log house; to tell every one that Gloria was with her father.  Her mother promised; began asking questions, and Gloria said a bleak “good-bye” and hung up.

The newspapers.  She sat there staring into space and seeing the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, hawked by newsboys, on stands, thrust under doors, going like spreading snowflakes of a big storm into post-offices, to racing trains, all over the land.  Her mother had telephoned the emergency hospitals!  Gloria could have wept in rage, screamed, thrown herself down and given over to paroxysms of weeping.  But she only sat on, her face whiter and whiter, looking into emptiness and seeing headlines that towered as high as immense black cliffs.  Her mother had telephoned Mildred Carter, that hateful, hateful, thrice-hateful Mildred Carter; had confessed that Gloria had gone out with Mr. Gratton; was gone all night, no one knew where; Mildred Carter who was as good as married to Bob Dwight of the Chronicle!  And the emergency hospitals—­Gloria with never a tear coming in her hour of greatest distress sat rocking back and forth on her chair, crying:  “Oh, I wish I were dead!”

As one hears noises through a dream, long powerless to connect them logically with familiar happenings, so now did Gloria absently hearken to Gratton calling from the foot of the stairs.  She jumped up only when she heard him start to mount them.  Then, galvanized, she sprang to her feet, cried to him, “I’ll be down in just a second,” and ran to her room.  She stood again looking at herself in her glass.

“Gloria Gaynor,” she heard her own pale lips say, “you have gotten yourself into a nasty, nasty mess.”  The lips began to tremble; then, with a great struggle for will-power, they steadied.  “And,” said Gloria in a cold, harsh little voice, “it’s up to you, and no one else, to get out the best you can this time.”

She bathed her face and hands; she rubbed her cheeks with a towel, determined to bring some vestige of colour back; she took down her hair.  Only then, so distrait to-day was Gloria, did she think of changing from her boyish suit into a house dress.  Her eyes, which had harboured only bewilderment and terror, now grew speculative.  She brought from her closet half a dozen dresses; chose a certain pink one without analysing the reasons of her selection, found silk stockings and pumps, and dressed from top to toe.  She would have to have it out with Gratton, one way or the other—­she began to know which way it would be.  But always a girl should be at her best.  Also, she decided, by the time that she was becomingly gowned and her hair arranged tastefully, it was as well to let Gratton wait for her a while; waiting always, to some extent, brought to the one cooling his heels a sense of disadvantage.  In short, Gloria had gone through the most panicky of her moments and was getting a grip on herself again.  When, after Gratton had waited and fumed for upward of an hour, she went downstairs she looked cool and pretty, and quite unembarrassed.  He flashed a look at her that was eloquent of nervous excitement.