“My shoes!” she cried, with the laughter still in her voice, as she held them up for sale, “right off the clay feet——”
“Gloria!” cried Peggy reluctantly.
“In just a minute,” answered the beautiful girl, “I’m busy selling these. Do you want to bid something? Then——”
“Gloria,” urged Peggy again, for she had caught a faint but impatient tap on the door at her back. She held the knob, and she felt it turn under her grasp. She knew she was not as strong as the horrible woman outside.
“There’s—somebody waiting to see you.”
Gloria paused, swaying on the uncertain heap of cushions, with a flush of annoyance coloring her face. Then all at once she looked directly into Peggy’s eyes, and understood.
“I’ll come,” she said, quickly, dropping the shoes with a thud on the floor, and descending from the teetering platform.
“You haven’t sold those shoes to any one yet,” reminded Zelda Darmeer; “they still belong to you.”
“That’s so,” assented Gloria abstractedly, and slipped into them.
With their button sides loose and flapping grotesquely against her silken ankles, she shuffled with what dignity she might towards the door. Peggy took her hand from the knob, and Gloria disappeared into the corridor.