Dangerous Days

Left alone in her untidy room after Graham's abrupt departure, Anna

Klein was dazed. She stood where he left her, staring ahead. What had

happened meant only one thing to her, that Graham no longer cared about

her, and, if that was true, she did not care to live.

It never occurred to her that he had done rather a fine thing, or that

he had protected her against herself. She felt no particular shame, save

the shame of rejection. In her small world of the hill, if a man gave a

girl valuable gifts or money there was generally a quid pro quo. If the

girl was unwilling, she did not accept such gifts. If the man wanted

nothing, he did not make them. And men who made love to girls either

wanted to marry them or desired some other relationship with them.

She listened to his retreating footsteps, and then began, automatically

to unbutton her thin white blouse. But with the sound of the engine of

his car below she ran to the window. She leaned out, elbows on the sill,

and watched him go, without a look up at her window.

So that was the end of that!

Then, all at once, she was fiercely angry. He had got her into this

scrape, and now he had left her. He had pretended to love her, and all

the time he had meant to do just this, to let her offer herself so he

might reject her. He had been playing with her. She had lost her home

because of him, had been beaten almost insensible, had been ill for

weeks, and now he had driven away, without even looking back.

She jerked her blouse off, still standing by the window, and when the

sleeve caught on her watch, she jerked that off, too. She stood for a

moment with it in her hand, her face twisted with shame and anger. Then

recklessly and furiously she flung it through the open window.

In the stillness of the street far below she heard it strike and

rebound.

"That for him!" she muttered.

Almost immediately she wanted it again. He had given it to her. It was

all she had left now, and in a curious way it had, through long wearing,

come to mean Graham to her. She leaned out of the window. She thought

she saw it gleaming in the gutter, and already, attracted by the crash,

a man was crossing the street to where it lay.

"You let that alone," she called down desperately. The figure was

already stooping over it. Entirely reckless now, she ran, bare-armed and

bare-bosomed, down the stairs and out into the street. She had thought

to see its finder escaping, but he was still standing where he had

picked it up.