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Show KATHLEEN NORMS The Woman Doesn't Always Pay TTERE IS A LETTER from a man Ll to call him that for the moment. Lew Arnold lives in an Arkansas city, and is 43. Some years ago he fell in love with one of the girls-in girls-in the office, but "I did not ask my wife for a divorce," says his letter, "because I knew she would refuse me." The boss always knows that, incidentally. He and this girl, Vera, shortly became be-came lovers, and he says he did everything short of marriage to make her position right. Vera was evidently a good office worker, for she went straight ahead, and was promoted steadily. Two years ago she bore him a son, going to live with an aunt in the country for a year, after which she resumed her office work, now being herself at the head of a smaller office. When the baby was two months old Vera married a young sailor who was dying of anemia in a service hospital giving her baby his name with "junior" attached. The last few months of her husband's life she nursed him devotedly, and evidently he died satisfied with his bargain. Affair Discovered Vera was satisfied with hers, too, for while she never pretended to feel anything but sympathy and gratitude for the man who had given giv-en his name to her baby, she never would have anything to do with Lew again. Lew's wife, who was childless learning of the affair and the baby, did divorce him, and has remarried, so that the way is clear for Lew now. But not for Vera. She firmly refuses re-fuses to consider any relationship with Lew at all, and his letter to me is a frantic plea to ask her to Dangerous Abortion For two years the boss had Francie and Francie had the boss. Then she had a dangerous abortion, for which, she wrote me, Paul paid. And then the unbelievable happened, and the wife of the boss was removed re-moved by death. Francie's loving heart couldn't help singing; the way seemed clear now. But Paul didn't see it that way. He wanted a little freedom before he married Francie. Her bloom, he reminded her, had somewhat worn off with illness and tears, and he asked her to invite various pretty girls up from the office, for dinners din-ners which Francie cooked, so that he might look them over. And if any woman cannot believe this, I can only give her my personal per-sonal word that It is the exact truth. Francie's explanation to me was that so high was Paul's sense of honor that he dared not marry until he was absoultely sure of his true and loyal love for the woman he made his' wife. And suddenly he married a rather rich woman some years his senior, and gave Francie money enough to get to California. She had developed a dry, tight cough and was growing alarmingly thin. So Francie came to San Francisco, Francis-co, to the big tubercular ward of the City Hospital, and it was from that place that she wrote me again, and I saw her often after that, during the two years she lived. She told me lovingly more than once what she thought of Paul; he had known that she was not well enough to be a good wife to him, and for the sake of his two daughters and his job he had thought it wisest to send her where she could get well. I never told her what I thought of Paul. "... became lovers . . ." marry him, and to give him the right to raise his own boy. Vera hasn't written me. If she had I think I would tell her that under the circumstances she would only jeopardize her own and her child's happiness and security by putting the slightest faith in any promises from Lew. Whether she was fully aware of what she did or not, she has neatly turned the tables on Lew, and I think he deserves being ignored completely from now on. Some other office girl will eventually eventual-ly console Lew, although, being free, he will probably move more warily now. I have no advice at all for him. This case reminds me of one so sad and so incredible that I feel anger rising whenever I think of it. It began some years ago with a letter from a girl of 20, who wrote me that she was desperately in love with the office boss, whose wife of course never had understood him, Ibut was clinging to him for sheer spite. Francie consoled the boss in his desolate situation, and he rented rent-ed a small apartment for her. She left a good father and mother and two brothers to suffer the shame of it; she never saw them again. |