"Yes—everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except the one thing I want."
Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressed feeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride.
"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'd never care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Men have always been a sort of amusement—and the oftener the man changed, the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply must marry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated to wander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to come in and rest a while."
"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home."
"Of course—in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's house could be. But"—with a little sob—"I've seen my mate and I want to begin my nest."
They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made an impulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it—"I'm a little idiot—but I can't help it—I haven't any pride left—a woman never does have, really, when she's in love—oh, Pauline, do you think he cares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed in herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes I think he does. Again I fear that—that he doesn't. And lately—why doesn't he come here any more?"
"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in a voice so strained that Gladys ought to have noticed it.
"But it isn't that—I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do with me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that—that he does care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think." Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I could find out the truth—settle it one way or the other. But I must sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him," she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it—he's the best—he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best."
Pauline rose and leaned against the railing—she could evade the truth no longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught in her own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper, abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless—