Dangerous Days

Clayton Spencer was facing with characteristic honesty a situation that

he felt was both hopeless and shameful.

He was hopelessly in love with Audrey. He knew now that he had known it

for a long time. Here was no slender sentiment, no thin romance. With

every fiber of him, heart and soul and body, he loved her and wanted

her. There was no madness about it, save the fact itself, which was

mad enough. It was not the single attraction of passion, although he

recognized that element as fundamental in it. It was the craving of a

strong man who had at last found his woman.

He knew that, as certainly as he knew anything. He did not even question

that she cared for him. It was as though they both had passed through

the doubting period without knowing it, and had arrived together at the

same point, the crying need of each other.

He rather thought, looking back, that Audrey had known it sooner than he

had. She had certainly known the night she learned of Chris's death.

His terror when she fainted, the very way he had put her out of his arms

when she opened her eyes--those had surely told her. Yet, had Chris's

cynical spirit been watching, there had been nothing, even then.

There was, between them, nothing now. He had given way to the people who

flocked to her with sympathy, had called her up now and then, had sent

her a few books, some flowers. But the hopelessness of the situation

held him away from her. Once or twice, at first, he had called her on

the telephone and had waited, almost trembling, for her voice over the

wire, only to ask her finally, in a voice chilled with repression, how

she was feeling, or to offer a car for her to ride in the park. And her

replies were equally perfunctory. She was well. She was still studying,

but it was going badly. She was too stupid to learn all those pot-hooks.

Once she had said: "Aren't you ever coming to see me, Clay?"

Her voice had been wistful, and it had been a moment before he had

himself enough in hand to reply, formally: "Thank you. I shall, very soon."

But he had not gone to the little fiat again.

Through Natalie he heard of her now and then.

"I saw Audrey to-day," she said once. "She is not wearing mourning. It's

bad taste, I should say. When one remembers that she really drove Chris

to his death--"

He had interrupted her, angrily.