Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/187

 heard a word uttered with equal determination; she put in one breath "neither life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature" should balk her; and it left Gregg nothing more to ask or to say. They talked when the waiter brought their luncheon and they ate, but neither returned to mention of the Hales; for Gregg had his answer and she had said what she had wished.

Arriving alone in his car at the Hales' that evening, Gregg did not go up the driveway as he had on the night of the dance; instead, he stopped at the curb a short way from the house and got out to walk up and down a minute before going in. He had flowers in a box under his arm and that, after all, seemed to him to form about the total of what he was bringing Marjorie; and he rebelled at going to her with no more upon an evening which, in some ways, must be the hardest in all her life.

Up there in her father's room was a light and beside it undoubtedly was her father in his bed, with her mother watching beside him, fond and solicitous and wholly unsuspicious. How strange, Gregg thought, that the house could appear identical to-night as upon other nights, that it could seem to any casual passerby a secure home, when in reality it was rent from top to bottom; and not even the mistress of it knew.

Gregg stopped beside one of the big trees in the parkway between the walk and the avenue and was standing in the shadow from the nearest street lamp when a car approached and slowed and finally halted almost opposite the tree. It was a new, shining roadster with only the driver on the seat, and he turned to