Dangerous Days

She was, she knew, not quite normal, but the fear gripped and held her.

These big strong men, no one ever looked after them. They spent their

lives caring for others, and were never cared for.

There were times when a sort of exaltation of sacrifice kept her head

high, when the thing she was forced to give up seemed trifling compared

with the men and boys who, some determinedly, some sheepishly, left the

crowd around the borrowed car from which she spoke, and went into the

recruiting station. There was sacrifice and sacrifice, and there was

some comfort in the thought that both she and Clayton were putting the

happiness of others above their own.

They had both, somehow, somewhere, missed the path. But they must never

go back and try to find it.

Delight's visit left her thoughtful. There must be some way to save

Graham. She wondered how much of Clayton's weariness was due to Graham.

And she wondered, too, if he knew of the talk about Natalie and Rodney

Page. There was a great deal of talk. Somehow such talk cheapened his

sacrifice and hers.

Not that she believed it, or much of it. She knew how little such gossip

actually meant. Practically every woman she knew, herself included, had

at one time or another laid herself open to such invidious comment. They

had all been idle, and they sought amusement in such spurious affairs as

this, harmless in the main, but taking on the appearance of evil. That

was part of the game, to appear worse than one really was. The older

the woman, the more eager she was often in her clutch at the vanishing

romance of youth.

Only--it was part of the game, too, to avoid scandal. A fierce pride for

Clayton's name sent the color to her face.

On the evening after Delight's visit, she had promised to speak at a

recruiting station far down-town in a crowded tenement district, and

tired as she was, she took a bus and went down at seven o'clock. She was

uneasy and nervous. She had not spoken in the evening before, and in all

her sheltered life she had never seen the milling of a night crowd in a

slum district.

There was a wagon drawn up at the curb, and an earnest-eyed young

clergyman was speaking. The crowd was attentive, mildly curious. The

clergyman was emphatic without being convincing. Audrey watched the

faces about her, standing in the crowd herself, and a sense of the

futility of it all gripped her. All these men, and only a feeble cheer

as a boy still in his teens agreed to volunteer. All this effort for

such scant result, and over on the other side such dire need! But one

thing cheered her. Beside her, in the crowd, a portly elderly Jew was

standing with his hat in his hand, and when a man near him made some

jeering comment, the Jew brought his hand down on his shoulder.