eat heap King had left for her. She began to
look about, planning swiftly just how easiest to move the few belongings
which must go with her. She could pile odds and ends into a blanket; she
could remake the canvas roll as King had done so often; she and Gratton
could drag the bundles to the front of the cave and push them over, down
the cliffs.

"First, we'll get things together, all in a heap," she said aloud.

He came forward and stood warming his nervous hands at her fire, his
eyes everywhere at once. He marked the shipshape air of the cavern, the
parcels which were to-night's supper and to-morrow's three poor little
meals, each set carefully apart from the others on the rock shelf. He
saw how the firewood was piled in its place, not scattered; how Gloria's
bed and King's looked almost comfortable because of the fir-boughs; how
the clean pots and pans were in their places. Then he turned his full
eyes like searchlights upon the girl.

"And you," he said, marvelling, "_you_ actually came with a man like
King into a place like this!"

"I was a fool," cried Gloria. "A pitiful little fool. Oh!"

Had she been thinking less of Gloria and more of this other man with
whom she was now to cope she must have marked a certain swift change in
his attitude. It became less furtive, more assured. His eyes left her to
rove again, lingered with the two couches, and returned to her.

"You found King wasn't your kind," he announced. "You have quarrelled!"

"From the very beginning," she replied quickly. "He is unthinkable. I
would have left him long ago, only ..."

"Only there was no place to go," Gratton finished it for her. "And now,"
he continued slowly, studying her, "you are willing to come with me."

"Yes," she told him unhesitatingly.

"But," he offered musingly, "you refused me once and turned to him."

"Haven't I told you I was a fool? I didn't know then quite what men
were ... some men."

She was not measuring every word now. She meant simply that she was
determined to have done with Mark King, holding bitterly that she hated
him; that she would go to any one to be definitely through with King.
Yet he had time to weigh her words and draw from each one his own
significance.

His eyes followed her as she gathered up her few personal and intimate
possessions, comb, brush, little silken things of pale pink and blue. A
faint colour seeped into the usually colourless lips at which his
dead-white teeth were suddenly g