Beauty for Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page B

region will have Gloria’s picture in it? Yes, and yours too if one could judge from the way the cameras were crowded nearby yesterday. People will recognize you wherever you go, and what would they think to see you eating sandwiches by the roadside? A picnic right after a funeral!”
    “Nobody is going to recognize us where we’re going, Adelaide. Run along, child, and get ready as soon as you can! Vanna, can you take care of your mother for a while?” There was eagerness in his eyes and voice. His wife looked at him as if he were insane.
    “Charles! You simply can’t do a thing like that to us all! It is preposterous. Why, you’re crazy! Gloria owes a debt to her fellow townspeople! A social debt.”
    “I don’t see for what!” said her husband, drinking the last swallow of his coffee and beginning to fold his napkin.
    “Why, all those wedding presents for one thing. They’ll have to be sent back, of course, and she’ll have to be here to attend to them and write notes and everything.”
    “Yes? Well, that’s all the more reason why I mean to get her away right off this morning. That child is not going through any more harrowing scenes for a while. She’ll have a nervous breakdown before another week if she does. Do you know she hasn’t cried a tear yet? Do you know that’s a dangerous state to be in?”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” said the mother complacently. “It’s just that Gloria is a very self-controlled girl. I brought her up not to cry over things!”
    But Gloria was up in her room working fast. She did not even wait for a maid to help her. She was getting out her overnight bag and suitcase, flinging in a few necessities, toiletries, accessories, plain sports clothes, rooting out old favorites that she had not been wearing lately since her engagement was announced because her mother had said she was too much in the public eye to go around in clothes that were out-of-date. She didn’t put in a single black dress. White and yellow and brown, a couple of knit dresses for cool days, a coat, and a plain little hat.
    When her mother, having lost her argument with her husband and having given her orders for the day to the cook and her social secretary, finally hurried upstairs to deal with her recalcitrant daughter, she found Gloria cloaked and hatted and gloved, sitting by her window with her two bags on the floor at her feet, watching for her father’s car to come around.
    “Gloria, you’re hurting me very much by your strange actions,” began her mother, sitting down and surveying the rebel.
    “I’m sorry, Mother, but I
have
to get away right off. I have to get away from people!”
    “You’re a strange child! One would suppose you would want to be with your own mother and sister! Now, while you’re in trouble, one would suppose you would confide in your own mother!”
    Gloria turned despairing eyes on her parent. “Mother, you just don’t understand!” she said desperately. “I’ve got to get somewhere away from everything. I’ll come back sometime when I get my bearings, but I won’t go to Europe nor into society. I’ve got to get away from those things and find out what it all means!”
    “What do you mean, ‘what it all means’?”
    “I don’t know what I mean, but I’ve got to. I’ve stood this horror as long as I can. It’s been terrible!”
    “Gloria, do you think Stan would like you to do a strange thing like this? Wouldn’t he expect you to stay here for a few days at least and help comfort his mother and keep up appearances?”
    Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Mother, Stan isn’t to be considered anymore! That’s over!”
    “Why, Gloria, what a terrible thing to say. When you just adored Stan and wanted to do everything you could to please him! Why look how hard you worked on your father to get him to build a bar in your new house just because Stan wanted one.”
    Gloria’s face hardened. “Yes, and now I wish I hadn’t,” she said half fiercely. “If Stan