"You found King wasn't your kind," he announced. "You have quarrelled!"
"From the very beginning," she replied quickly. "He is unthinkable. I would have left him long ago, only …"
"Only there was no place to go," Gratton finished it for her. "And now," he continued slowly, studying her, "you are willing to come with me."
"Yes," she told him unhesitatingly.
"But," he offered musingly, "you refused me once and turned to him."
"Haven't I told you I was a fool? I didn't know then quite what men were … some men."
She was not measuring every word now. She meant simply that she was determined to have done with Mark King, holding bitterly that she hated him; that she would go to any one to be definitely through with King. Yet he had time to weigh her words and draw from each one his own significance.
His eyes followed her as she gathered up her few personal and intimate possessions, comb, brush, little silken things of pale pink and blue. A faint colour seeped into the usually colourless lips at which his dead-white teeth were suddenly gnawing. When she saw the look in his eyes, she stared at him wonderingly.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice puzzled.
"What is what?" Gratton laughed, but the look was still there. His eyes did not laugh.