"Don't you want me?" asked Gloria. "Aren't you glad, Mark?"
She was serenely prepared for objections, should they be forthcoming. For it was not on any spur of the moment, but after long deliberation, that she had decided that she would go with him. She wanted no scandal in the papers; she meant that there should be none. If it were rumoured that she had gone out of town with Gratton; if Gratton wanted to be ugly and feed rumour; then on top of that if she appeared within reach of a reporter without a husband, there would be talk. If it were answered that she was married to Mark King, there would be the question: "And where, my dear, is this Mark King?" Those girl friends in San Francisco who had met him at her birthday-party would be fairly squirming with excited curiosity to know everything. Among themselves they would make insinuations about the Bear Tamer or the Animal Trainer, as Gloria knew that they would variously and mirthfully designate him. They would find it unusual that King had married her one day and had gone off the next without her. They would hazard endless unpleasant explanations; they would get their heads together; they would make an astonishing patchwork of scraps of distorted rumour and bits of wild speculation…. From upstairs last night she had heard fragmentary outbursts from the "judge." "Irregular; no licence." Now Gloria meant to kill the snake outright, not to allow the scotched reptile to writhe free. She was married; she was going with her husband into the wilderness on the most romantic of all honeymoons. The papers were free to make much of that.
"Of course I want you," said King slowly. "Glad? Glad that you want to come with me? Can't you see that I am the gladdest man on earth? But——"
"I have already written a message I wanted to send to a girl friend in San Francisco…." It was to Miss Mildred Carter, who was engaged to be married to Bob Dwight of the Chronicle…. "I was going to have it phoned in to her. It tells her I'm—married. To you, Mark. And that we're off on the most wonderful trip together into the heart of the wild country."
"God bless you," he said heartily. But Gloria, glancing at him swiftly, saw that his eyes were clouded with perplexity.
"Of course," she said, "if you don't want a girl along——"
"Gloria!"
"Well, then? It's settled? I'm to go?"
"Only I'm afraid it isn't the sort of a trip for a girl. It's hard going, and—Oh, it's a cursed shame I can't put it off."
"You said last night that you weren't afraid of anything Brodie and his men could do? That they didn't even know where to go? That they'd never know where to find you?"