"
"Oh, how terrible!" Muriel was sincerely moved. Her eyes filled with
tears. "Has this happened much?"
"Drinking, you mean?"
"No, this--leaving you?"
"Oh, yes. Frequently. He'll come in about midnight--and weep and ask me
to forgive him."
"And do you?"
"I don't know. We just go on."
The two women sat there in the lamplight and looked at each other, each
in a different way helpless before this thing. Gloria was still pretty,
as pretty as she would ever be again--her cheeks were flushed and she
was wearing a new dress that she had bought--imprudently--for fifty
dollars. She had hoped she could persuade Anthony to take her out
to-night, to a restaurant or even to one of the great, gorgeous moving
picture palaces where there would be a few people to look at her, at
whom she could bear to look in turn. She wanted this because she knew
her cheeks were flushed and because her dress was new and becomingly
fragile. Only very occasionally, now, did they receive any invitations.
But she did not tell these things to Muriel.
"Gloria, dear, I wish we could have dinner together, but I promised a
man and it's seven-thirty already.
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