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Show Kathleen Norris Says: School Love Affairs Can Be Dangerous (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) Matt was quite changed when he returned. He gripped my hands and said to me, "I could kill you now. There's no moment when I couldn't kill you. But I believe you'll come back to me.'' A REAL PROBLEM It is sometimes considered old-fashioned to talk of protecting pro-tecting a woman's "honor" but the fact remains that the woman who sacrifices her honor, or whatever you choose to call it, will sooner or later be faced with a problem she cannot so easily dismiss. For instance, there is Angela, a girl of 23, who wants to marry a doctor in his early thirties. Angela is going ahead with her plans for a spring wedding, wed-ding, but she is afraid of a man who has returned to claim her. They were high school sweethearts. Now Matt feels that Angela has no right to marry anyone else. What should she do? By KATHLEEN NORRIS THIS is the story of Angela, An-gela, who is now 23, and wants to be married this spring to the man who has won her heart and not only her heart, but her mind and soul. He is nine' years older than she, an army doctor stationed sta-tioned at one of our midwest-ern midwest-ern posts. It would be a fine marriage for Angela, for he could give her a great deal in comfort and position that her earlier life has not had. But there's a cloud. The cloud is an old friend named Matt, who was Angela's boy friend when she was in high school. "When Iiwas 17 and Matt two years older I thought there was nobody no-body like him," her letter says. "We were really crazy about each other. Matt is a big powerful fellow who seemed much older than he was, and there was not a girl in school who would not have been thrilled to have him in love with her. "He talked then about getting married, but my mother told me that at our ages no affair could be serious. Went to Matt's Cottage. "Matt and his brother had a little two-room cottage on the college grounds-, and when his brother was away I used to go there sometimes; we would buy provisions at the 'Cash-and-Carry,' cook ourselves little lit-tle dinners and have great fun. I was living part of the time at home in a town seven miles away and part of the time with my aunt in town, so that I could manage a good deal of spare time without being questioned. "My father is dead and I dare not frighten my mother with this, but I am sick with terror for fear he will keep his word. What can I do? I am going ahead with wedding wed-ding plans and bridesmaids' dresses, but I am in a cold sweat when I wake up at night, and any little sound makes my heart stop. Do you think he will dare do it? I cannot warn the police because then there would be publicity; and if he knew he was being watched, or was warned, he might grow desperate, "He is quite changed from what he was, or not so much changed as worse than he was; angrier and harder. He gripped my hands and said to me, 'I would kill you now. There's no moment when I couldn't kill you. But I believe 'you'll come back to me, and I'll wait until I'm sure you are double-crossing me.' " The letter ends with a wild appeal: ap-peal: shall she run away? Shall she hide? Shall she tell Jack of her danger? What shall she do? "Eventually, on perhaps six or seven occasions I stayed overnight there; I was never happy about this. I knew it was not right, and I was always afraid his brother would return re-turn unexpectedly and lose his respect re-spect for me. "That June Matt left college in his junior year and went to a lumber mill 'to make enough money to get married.' "Our correspondence languished; Matt was sent to Central America; years went by. I got my teacher's degree and enjoyed my work, and then last year I met Jack. We have all our plans made for a spring wedding. wed-ding. I love Jack romantically, idiotically, idi-otically, but I hope sensibly, too; I can imagine no life more gloriously satisfying than that of being my Captain's wife. "But the problem is that Matt has returned to town, and whether his feeling for me died out or not it is at the blazing point now. He insists that I am promised to him, and that we never ended that engagement en-gagement and that I cannot in honor marry Jack. A Violent Type. "This would be merely silly if it were not that he is an angry and violent type. His brother told me once that their father killed himself and Matt's mother in a jealous rage. I sent for Matt and we had a terrible ter-rible interview. He threatened to disclose everything to Jack, who has returned to his post I could tell him truly that Jack knew of it, and bad said that my foolishness as a little girl would not affect his love and respect for me today. "Then Matt swore that I would never live to be Jack's wife, that I had given myself to him, and belonged be-longed to him body and soul, and that if he could not have me here he would have me in eternity. Advised to Move. My answer went to her by airmail days ago, and today she writes me gratefully that she is following my advice and that she hears that Matt has left town. I advised her to move, with her mother, to the aunt's home where her mother was going to move anyway, any-way, after the wedding, and by all means to notify the police. The chances are that Matt's threats were only threats, only the last despairing gesture of a man who sees his girl won by a better man. But even so it is just as well not to risk anything. The aunt's family consists, beside be-side herself, of two bachelor sons; a much harder group to scare than are two lone women. And more than that the police instantly checked on Matt and temporarily placed a guard inconspicuously in the neighborhood neigh-borhood of the apartment house. So the probability is that Angela in a few weeks will feel herself safe in her new home with a husband to protect her. But when it has involved intimacies, intima-cies, the exchanging of passionate notes signed "your adoring husband," hus-band," "your crazy little loving wife," the buying of groceries and cooking them in a tiny cabin, and especially when the girl has given the man the supreme proof of her love and trust, then there is a bond that isn't easily broken. We bear a good deal in these days, about the unimportance of a woman's wom-an's honor. "She doesn't harm anyone any-one but herself," the girls argue, "and it's nobody's business." |