The Everlasting Whisper

"I want to use the long-distance telephone," she said. "Where is it?"

"This way, miss," said the man, eager to be of service. Then, with a bashful grin, he amended: "I beg pardon. Mrs. Gratton, I mean!"

Gloria stared at him. Her mouth was open to correct him; she saw how naturally his mistake was made. But before she could speak a wild flutter in her heart stopped the words; she went swiftly to the register. In Gratton's own hand, set opposite the clerk's number seven indicating her room, were the words: "Gratton & Wife, S.F." She turned crimson; went white.

"I'll telephone later," she said faintly, and went again to the door and this time out into the autumn sunshine. All of the high adventure was dead ashes; the "lark" was lost in a sinister enterprise.

Gratton's wife--Mrs. Gratton----He had done that! She walked on blindly; tears gathered, tears of mortification, of blazing anger. But they did not fall; she dabbed viciously at her eyes. Why had he done that? Why? Never a "why" so insistent in all of the girl's lifetime. Never a moment of such blind wonder.

"Howdy, miss?" a voice was saying.

It brought her back to earth from a region of swirling vapours, back to to-day and Coloma. She stopped and looked at the man, startled. He was a stranger, yet dimly familiar. The little store, his own round face, his shirt-sleeves and boots---"I wanted to ask," he said solicitously, "how your father was this morning."

"My father?" she repeated dully. "Oh, he's quite well, thank you."

Plainly her words puzzled him. He squinted his eyes as though to make sure of her.

"You're the young lady that stopped in here one day last spring with Mark King? June it was, wasn't it? You bought some stuff for lunch."

"Yes," she admitted. She would never have remembered him. But he, who had not seen others like her, remembered.

"Then you're Ben Gaynor's girl?"

"Yes," she said again, and was about to go on, resenting his persistent meddlesomeness.

"And you say he's well?"

"Quite well, I believe," she said coolly.

"But wait a minute," he called after her. "Wasn't he bad hurt last night?"

"Papa hurt?"

"I supposed that was why you was here----"

"How hurt?" she cried sharply. "When? Where? Tell me; why don't you tell me?"