Dangerous Days

Graham was engaged. He hardly knew himself how it had come about. His

affair with Marion had been, up to the very moment of his blurted--out

"I want you," as light-hearted as that of any of the assorted young

couples who flirted and kissed behind the closed doors of that popular

house.

The crowd which frequented the Hayden home was gay, tolerant and

occasionally nasty. It made ardent love semi-promiscuously, it drank

rather more than it should, and its desire for a good time often brought

it rather close to the danger line. It did not actually step over, but

it hovered gayly on the brink.

And Toots remained high-priestess of her little cult. The men liked

her. The girls imitated her. And Graham, young as he was, seeing her

popularity, was vastly gratified to find himself standing high in her

favor.

Marion was playing for the stake of the Spencer money. In her intimate

circle every one knew it but Graham.

"How's every little millionaire?" was Tommy Hale's usual greeting.

She knew only one way to handle men, and with the stake of the Spencer

money she tried every lure of her experience on Graham. It was always

Marion who on cold nights sat huddled against him in the back seat of

the Hayden's rather shabby car, her warm ungloved hand in his. It was

Marion who taught him to mix the newest of cocktails, and who later

praised his skill. It was Marion who insisted on his having a third,

too, when the second had already set his ears drumming.

The effect on the boy of her steady propinquity, of her constant

caressing touches, of the general letting-down of the bars of restraint,

was to rouse in him impulses of which he was only vaguely conscious,

and his proposal of marriage, when it finally came, was by nature of a

confession. He had kissed her, not for the first time, but this time she

had let him hold her, and he had rained kisses on her face.

"I want you," he had said, huskily.

And even afterward, when the thing was done, and she had said she would

marry him, she had to ask him if he loved her.

"I--of course I do," he had said. And had drawn her back into his arms.

He wanted to marry her at once. It was the strongest urge of his life,

and put into his pleading an almost pathetic earnestness. But she was

firm enough now.

"I don't think your family will be crazy about this, you know."

"What do we care for the family? They're not marrying you, are they?"