Dangerous Days

"At the same corner?"

"Yes."

He was very irritable all morning. He felt as though a net was closing

in around him, and his actual innocence made him the more miserable.

Miss Peterson found him very difficult that day, and shed tears in her

little room before she went to lunch.

Anna herself was difficult that evening. Her landlady's son had given up

a good job and enlisted. Everybody was going. She supposed Graham would

go next, and she'd be left alone.

"I don't know. I'd like to."

"Oh, you'll go, all right. And you'll forget I ever existed." She made

an effort. "You're right, of course. I'm only looking ahead. If anything

happens to you, I'll kill myself."

The idea interested her. She began to dramatize herself, a forlorn

figure, driven from home, and deserted by her lover. She saw herself

lying in the cottage, stately and mysterious, while the hill girls went

in and out, and whispered.

"I'll kill myself," she repeated.

"Nothing will happen to me, Anna, dear."

"I don't know why I care so. I'm nothing to you."

"That's not so."

"If you cared, you'd have come up the other night. You left me alone in

that lonesome hole. It's hell, that place. All smells and whispering and

dirt."

"Now listen to me, Anna. You're tired, or you wouldn't say that. You

know I'm fond of you. But I've got you into trouble enough. I'm not--for

God's sake don't tempt me, Anna."

She looked at him half scornfully.

"Tempt you!" Then she gave a little scream. Graham following her eyes

looked through the window near them.

"Rudolph!" she whimpered. And began to weep out of pure terror.

But Graham saw nobody. To soothe her, however, he went outside and

looked about. There were half a dozen cars, a group of chauffeurs, but

no Rudolph. He went hack to her, to find her sitting, pale and tense,

her hands clenched together.

"They'll pay you out some way," she said. "I know them. They'll never

believe the truth. That was Rudolph, all right. He'll think we're living

together. He'd never believe anything else."

"Do you think he followed you the other day?"

"I gave him the shake, in the crowd."

"Then I don't see why you're worrying. We're just where we were before,

aren't we?"

"You don't know them. I do. They'll be up to something."

She was excited and anxious, and with the cocktail he ordered for her

she grew reckless.