Gloria laughed scornfully, glancing at Anthony from the corners of her eyes.
"Well," he demanded, "what are you laughing at?" "You know what I'm laughing at," she answered coldly.
"At that case of whiskey?"
"Yes"--she turned to Muriel--"he paid seventy-five dollars for a case of whiskey yesterday."
"What if I did? It's cheaper that way than if you get it by the bottle. You needn't pretend that you won't drink any of it."
"At least I don't drink in the daytime."
"That's a fine distinction!" he cried, springing to his feet in a weak rage. "What's more, I'll be damned if you can hurl that at me every few minutes!"
"It's true."
"It is not! And I'm getting sick of this eternal business of criticising me before visitors!" He had worked himself up to such a state that his arms and shoulders were visibly trembling. "You'd think everything was my fault. You'd think you hadn't encouraged me to spend money--and spent a lot more on yourself than I ever did by a long shot."
Now Gloria rose to her feet.
"I won't let you talk to me that way!"
"All right, then; by Heaven, you don't have to!"
In a sort of rush he left the room. The two women heard his steps in the hall and then the front door banged. Gloria sank back into her chair. Her face was lovely in the lamplight, composed, inscrutable.
"Oh--!" cried Muriel in distress. "Oh, what is the matter?"
"Nothing particularly. He's just drunk."
"Drunk? Why, he's perfectly sober. He talked----"
Gloria shook her head.
"Oh, no, he doesn't show it any more unless he can hardly stand up, and he talks all right until he gets excited. He talks much better than he does when he's sober. But he's been sitting here all day drinking--except for the time it took him to walk to the corner for a newspaper."
"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.