vital issues; when there was no mamma and no papa to turn to; when there were no shoulders other than her own to feel the weight of events.  She must do her own thinking, come to her own decisions.  Here was no time for a misstep.  The one great step she had already taken; she had cried “No!” That step could be reconsidered, retraced; she looked at Gratton’s face and saw that.  But now she would not do that; she could not.  In the city, seeing the two men together, she had turned to Gratton.  Now, here in her father’s log house in the mountains, she wondered that she could have done so.  Did men change colour like chameleons, shifted from one environment to another?  Or was it she who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon?  A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her.  It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias:  a girl who was very young, spoiled, vain, and selfish; a girl who was older, who looked above and beyond the confines of her own self, who was warmhearted and impulsive, and could be generous.  There was the Gloria who was the product of her mother’s teaching and pampering; there was that other Gloria who was the true daughter of a pioneer stock, a girl linked to the city through tradition, bound to the outdoors through instinct.  There was the Gloria who was ashamed of Mark King at a formal gathering in her own home; there was the Gloria who was thrilled to the depths of her being as in the forest-lands she knew a breathless moment in the arms of Mark King.

Well, here were considerations to linger over on an idle day.  Now, without seeking for hidden springs, there were on the surface certain plain facts.  No matter what she had felt toward Gratton before, she detested him now; no matter what he might have appeared in San Francisco, here in his unaccustomed garb he looked to her puny, shallow, and contemptible.  He was, as she had told him, a beast.  He had betrayed her confidence; he had taken advantage of her headlong youth; he had displayed to her view the vileness within him.  He loved her, did he?  So much the better.  It lay within her power, then, to repay him, if only in part, for what he had made her suffer.

* * * * *

“I repeat, Miss Gloria,” Gratton was saying, a stubborn look in his eyes, “that you promised to marry me.  You have had a hard day, I realize; there has been much to unnerve you.  I erred in haste, perhaps; I should have waited until you had a night’s rest.  But you know why I did not wait.  It was for your sake.”

Gloria heard him through with a hard little smile.

“Nothing is further from my intention, Mr. Gratton,” she told him icily, “than to marry you.  Now or ever.  Please let us consider the matter closed once and for all.”