sured of safety. But
when he went, there remained Gratton and his venom. Quicksands all about
her in which she would be floundering at this moment but for Mark
King----

* * * * *

Her heart was beating normally again, the pallor left her face, which
became delicately flushed. Her eyes, large and humid, a sweet grey and
once more almost childlike--eyes to remind a man that here, after all,
was no woman of the world, but only a young girl--rose to King's and met
his long and searchingly. Yet there was that in their expression that
made him understand that she was not looking at him, the physical man,
so much as through him. For the first time in her pampered life the day
had come when she was face to face with 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, t