Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/364

 with the new thrills and joys of complete possession of each other's bodies.

But Gregg Mowbry since then had sat alone with Sybil Russell in that flat on Clearedge Street, while Charles Hale, unconscious, was carried to Fursten's; at Kilkerry's he awaited Russell's return; he had lost his job and left Billy; and gone to Cragero's for Bill; had taken Bill, just now, home; and he, Gregg Mowbry, had come back from Bay City alone. So he held Marjorie Hale by her hands, his palms on hers and he said:

"I got a real job to-day, Marjorie. Not much real money."

"I know the kind of job you got, Gregg," she said.

"The first work job I ever took on. Twenty-four a week to start with; four dollars a day, I mean. With Chicago Hydraulics; I'll be started down the canal on water power. That sort of thing got me once, when I was a kid; I took my course in Michigan at engineering—hydraulics. But I seemed to be a salesman when I got out; I mean somebody offered me a drawing account of forty dollars a week selling gasoline pumps. Twenty was the limit for me as a hydraulic expert. So I put off starting at the bottom until to-day. In a couple of years, Marjorie, I ought to have a fair position and something ahead. I'm trying real work on account of myself and partly, of course, because of Bill; but I'd like to work for you and me, Marjorie. Will you wait a while to give me a chance to make good for you?"

"No," she said. "I'll not wait, Gregg." Then she told him, "Because we needn't; we mustn't. If we waited for you to do it all, we'd never get right with each other; for we'd start wrong."