Dangerous Days

"Sometimes I think you are not very happy."

"I'm happier than I would be trying to make him fall in love with me.

Oh, you needn't be shocked. It can be done. Lots of girls do it. It

isn't any moral sense that keeps me from it, either. It's just pride."

"My dear!"

"And there's another angle to it. I wouldn't marry a man who hasn't got

a mind of his own. Even if I had the chance, which I haven't. That silly

mother of his--she is silly, daddy, and selfish--Do you know what she is

doing now?"

"We ought not to discuss her. She--"

"Fiddlesticks. You love gossip and you know it."

Her tone was light, but the rector felt that arm around his neck

tighten. He surmised a depth of feeling that made him anxious.

"She is trying to marry him to Marion Hayden."

The rector sat up, almost guiltily.

"But--are you sure she is doing that?"

"Everybody says so. She thinks that if he is married, and there is a

war, he won't want to go if he has a wife." She was silent for a moment.

"Marion will drive him straight to the devil, daddy."

The rector reached up and took her hand. She cared more than she would

admit, he saw. She had thought the thing out, perhaps in the long

night--when he slept placidly. Thought and suffered, he surmised. And

again he remembered his worldly plans for her, and felt justly punished.

"I suppose it is hard for a father to understand how any one can know

his little girl and not love her. Or be the better for it."

She kissed him and slid off the arm of his chair.

"Don't you worry," she said cheerfully. "I had to make an ideal for

myself about somebody. Every girl does. Sometimes it's the plumber. It

doesn't really matter who it is, so you can pin your dreams to him. The

only thing that hurts is that Graham wasn't worth while."

She went back to her little cards, but some ten minutes later the

rector, lost in thought, heard the scratching of her pen cease.

"Did you ever think, daddy," she said, "of the influence women have over

men? Look at the Spencers. Mrs. Spencer spoiling Graham, and making her

husband desperately unhappy. And--"

"Unhappy? What makes you think that?"

"He looks unhappy."

The rector was startled. He had an instant vision of Clayton Spencer,

tall, composed, handsome, impeccably clothed. He saw him in the setting

that suited him best, the quiet elegance of his home. Clayton unhappy!

Nonsense. But he was uneasy, too. That very gravity which he had noticed

lately, that was certainly not the gravity of an entirely happy man.

Clayton had changed, somehow. Was there trouble there? And if there

were, why?