“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 gnawing.  When she saw the look in his eyes, she stared at him wonderingly.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice puzzled.

“What is what?” Gratton laughed, but the look was still there.  His eyes did not laugh.

“What makes you look like that?  What are you thinking?”

Now it was he who was vaguely puzzled.  Then he shrugged.

“I was just thinking how superb you are,” he replied, not entirely untruthfully.  For his ulterior thought had been reared upon the vital fact of her triumphant beauty.

The compliment was too much like hundreds she had received in her life to alarm her.  Rather, it pleased; what word of praise had she heard during these latter days?

His voice sounded queerly, as though his breath came with difficulty.  Maybe it did, since he was no outdoors man, and to him the climb up the rocks and the brief journey along the mountain flank was a painful labour.  Certain it was that the faint flush was still in the sallow cheeks.  Suddenly he lifted his hands, putting them out toward her.  She saw again the strange look in his eyes.

“Gloria!” he said hoarsely, “you are wonderful!  And you have come to me!”

Gloria met his rather too ardent admiration with that cool little laugh which had been her weapon in other days.  She was not afraid of Gratton.  To-day she had led and he had followed.  She had commanded and he had obeyed.  Here was a pleasant change from King’s masterfulness, and she fully intended to hold Gratton well in hand.

“I came to you,” she said frankly, “because I was a woman in distress and had no alternative.  That there has ever been any unpleasantness between us does not alter that fact.  You understand me, don’t you?”

He hardly heard her.  To his mind the situation was clearness itself.  Gloria had come alone into the forest with Mark King.  She had been with him all these days and nights.  But she and King had quarrelled; tired of each other already, perhaps.  Gratton did not care what the reason was; he was gloatingly satisfied with the outcome.  He had always coveted her; it took much to stir his pale blood, and only the superb beauty of Gloria Gaynor had ever fully done so.  King had stolen her away, but she had left him and had come straight to Gratton!