Two or three couples came out; he remained unnoticed in the darkness.  He heard a girl’s voice: 

“But who is he?  I think he’s terribly handsome.  And distinguished-looking.  Superior to our kind of nonsense.”

“Who are you talking about, Betty?” Her dancing partner pretended to be in doubt.  “Me?”

A whirlwind of girls’ laughter.  Then one of them saying: 

“You distinguished-looking!  Or handsome!  She means the sixty-nine-dollar serge suit.”

Good God!  Was there a price tag on him?

“Oh, the animal trainer!” They laughed again.  Then Gloria came and they called to her, demanding: 

“Who is he?”

“Oh,” said Gloria carelessly, “he is an old friend of papa’s and his name is King.”

They went in, two of the girls lingering a little behind the others.  Gloria and another.  The other, bantering and yet curious, said: 

“Georgia told me all about a Mr. King up in the mountains this spring.  And that it looked like love at first sight to her.  ’Fess up, Glory, my dear.”

Gloria’s laughter, unfettered, spontaneous, was of high amusement.

“Georgia said, just the same, that she’d bet on an elopement—­”

King reddened and stirred uneasily.  Gloria gasped.

“Georgia’s crazy!” she said emphatically.  “Why, the man is impossible!”

* * * * *

Five minutes later King went in, found his hat, and told Mrs. Gaynor good-night.  She was glad that he was going, and he knew it though she made the obvious perfunctory remark.  Gloria saw and came tripping across the room.

“Not going so soon?”

“Yes,” he said briefly.  “Good-bye, Gloria.”

“Good-night, you mean, don’t you?”

“I mean good-bye,” he said quietly.

Gratton thrust forward.  King left abruptly, leaving them together, conscious of the quick look of pleasure on the face of Gloria’s mother.

Chapter XI

Always Gloria, yielding to the heady impulses of youth, was ready for High Adventure.  Therein lay the explanation of many things which Gloria did.

Time went scurrying on.  Mark King had returned to the Sierra; no word came from him, and Gloria told herself with an exaggerated air of indifference that she had just about forgotten him.  Autumn came, that finest of all seasons about San Francisco Bay, the ocean fogs were thrust back, unveiling the clear sunny skies by day, the crystalline glitter of stars by night.  The city grew gayer as the season advanced; dinners and dances and theatre-parties made life a gloriously joyful affair for Gloria.  She had hardly the time to ask herself:  “Just where am I going?” It was so much easier to laugh and cry lightly, in the phrase of the day, “I am on my way!” She had drifted, drifted like one in a canoe trailing her fingers idly in the clear water and never noting when the little craft was caught