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Show Kathleen Norris Says: TFiei the Piper Comes for His Pay (BeU Syndicate WNU Service.) When I was 18 I fell in love with a handsome boy whose character my mother even then analyzed as weak. We were lovers in last year High. By KATHLEEN NORRIS THERE is one sin for which women pay a doubly, dou-bly, trebly, ten-times-multiplied price. Perhaps this isn't fair or reasonable, perhaps some day things will be more honestly adjusted, but the fact remains that when a girl makes a misstep in a certain direction there are seventy ways in which she can be punished. Very often this punishment is merely a secret thing in her own soul; a little stain of shame and regret, a constant, sharp sting of humiliation in the knowledge that there is a man somewhere alive in the world, a man other than her husband, who has an intimate knowledge knowl-edge of her sweetness, her kisses, her warm young body, her first young passion. She writhes at the thought that this man may be telling tell-ing his wife of the early affair, may be hinting it to others. It shakes her pride in herself, her confidence In her own integrity or sense, it takes the bloom from her honeymoon and puts just a tinge of suspicion into any slight or fancied slight she ever meets from other women. If she gets off with only this much discomfort, she is lucky. Other women have to pay higher. Naomi is one. This is part of Naomi's letter: High School Lovers. "When I was 18 I fell in love with a handsome boy whose character my mother even then analyzed as weak, but who seemed to me the sweetest, dearest fellow in the world. We were lovers in last year High, Donny after graduation taking a two years' course in business school and I going away to college in the West. At first I felt very uneasy as to the wisdom of assuming assum-ing this relationship, but Donny was earnestly in love, as I was, and we talked continually of marriage. "When I came home for my first Christmas holidays we were as passionately pas-sionately devoted as before, but before be-fore midsummer there was a change. My father went into bankruptcy bank-ruptcy and I got a job in the library, and Donny's mother, who disliked me, managed to send him away to college. From that moment I heard in his voice and read in his letters that he was trying to end the affair. af-fair. He no longer spoke of marriage, mar-riage, and even showed some anxiety to get back one of the few letters in which he had first promised prom-ised it. What I suffered, nobody but a girl who has experienced this terrible time knows, I hate to think of it even now. Under the circumstances circum-stances I could not hold him, and for three years we-did not see each other. Donny Reappears on Scene. "That was eight years ago. Last year I became engaged to one of the finest men in fact, the very finest man I ever have known. He has a great political future before him and a fine legal practice and we have already selected a home of our own. Our wedding day was set, when Donny turned up last month. Immediately he renewed his attentions atten-tions to me, protesting that he has always loved me and always planned for our marriage. His mother is dead now and he has a small income and a small salary so that he really is in a position to marry. His attitude was so unreasonable unrea-sonable and Clark was so puzzled by it that I had finally to explain everything. every-thing. Clark took it very nicely, said that of course it made no difference dif-ference as far as he was concerned, but that I must be the one to choose between them, and make my own decision. "This has thrown me into such a state of agitation and despair that I have been close to an actual nerv- ASHES OF LOVE Promises of marriage made by a high school girl are recalled to her years later by the man she had forgotten. for-gotten. His efforts to renew their affections and to hold her to her promise threaten to break up her engagement to another man she truly loves. Miss Norris advises the girl what she should do to not only end this affair peacefully, but to assure her happiness in the years to come. ous breakdown. I am not a nervous woman, and had thought for several years that while a good many men liked me, I was cured of liking them. But I am really in love now, and if I lose Clark I feel that I will never again know happiness in life. Senses Change in Fiance. "The point is, would Clark have been willing to turn me over to Donny, as it were, if he really loved me? Wouldn't he have said then that nothing that had happened in my very young girlhood could part us now? Is a man quite so reasonable reason-able when he loves a woman? "Do you feel that there is any ethical consideration here? Because Be-cause she once loved a man not wisely but too well should a woman feel herself morally bound to marry him years after their parting if the opportunity occurs? I don't want to marry Donny in fact, I could not. What I feel for him now is not quite so definite as dislike, but I don't want to see him or bother with him at all. The thought of marrying him is actually horrible to me. "On the other hand, I know that in spite of what he says all this has shocked and chilled Clark. At first I really believe he did not resent it, or thought he didn't. But since I told him I have noticed a change, a sort of quiet in his manner very unlike his old wild happiness and eagerness. Were Donny to disappear disap-pear all this would come back, but Donny hangs around, reminding me of old times, of notes I wrote him and places we met, always acting and speaking as if out of deep love for me but knowing, of course, that he is driving me wild. Can you give me any suggestions as to the solution solu-tion of a problem that frankly has grown too complicated for me?" Say Good-by to Both. The only advice I can give Naomi is to say a definite good-by to both these men for a time. She must dismiss Donny absolutely, refusing re-fusing to see him under any consideration consid-eration whatsoever. Then she must break her engagement with Clark, telling him that if, after a period of perhaps six or eight months, he wants to come back for her, she will make him a true and devoted wife. No other course will bring her peace of mind. Only when she is freed from Donny's attentions, and from the false position in which her engagement to Clark places her, will she feel herself honest again. Then if Clark comes back she can accept him with a clear mind; in the long years of marriage he never can accuse ac-cuse her of deceiving him, because she will have freed him of her own will. It's a very uncomfortable tangle all around; a tangle that a wilful little girl named Naomi might have spared the woman Naomi if she had been more self-controlled eight years ago. But the probability is that Clark will return after the stipulated stipu-lated period, or much sooner, that be will not let her youthful weakness weak-ness rob him of his wife. Only, Naomi will have to take a certain amount of humiliation and shame with the reconciliation. Not very serious, probably not all un-salu'.ary, un-salu'.ary, but so unnecessary! I wish all 18-year-old girls who read this today would take a look at that country to which they are so steadily moving, the unknown country called Womanhood, and Wifehood. |