New Britain herald., 1929-06-25

bet she knows Nr. Morgan has guessed her secret. Lots to do to- morrow. Got to relax and steep- relax and then sleep and sleep ani sleep" she forced herself to repeat slowly. drowsily. as the warm water lapped against her white flesh. !, When at last she was ready for bed, neEligee thrown to the foot Of her couch. thick volume on crim- inal law on her bedside table. to be used shameleasiy but somewhat profitably in reading herself to sleep, she suddenly remembered something.
 Cream bottle." she whispered I've got to pay him, too. Let's see - where's his bill?" And she battered swiftly in dark-blue satin mules to the secretary bookcase which dominated the best-iightea corner of her one-room apartment.
 There! That shows I'm not up- set. doesn't?" she triumphed. T wouldn't remember to set out the cream bottle and pay the old milk company if I was upset by Willis foolish-oh!" She stopped snort as she jerked on the light in the read. ing lamp upon the opened secre- tary. for the sudden illumination had forced upon her attention something which she would have given a weeks salary not to have seen that night.
 It was just . sna pshot framed in beaten silver. but 1t had the power to break her hard-w won control. X newspaper photographers pictur, of short. slim girl and very tall, thin man, caught in the act of walk ing down . flight of white marble steps. each carrying . briefcase. each grinninE triumphantly into tho camera. The snapshot was nearly two years old. taken at the successful conclusion of one of Morgan's biggest murder triais. The caption under the picture as it hai appeared in tho afternoon paper was: Attorney John Curtis Nor gan and his charming secretary, Miss Nan Carroll, leaving the courthouse q few minutes after the lawyer had won freedom for his client, Big Joe Connors, acquitted of the murder of Boss Powers" Why had she framed it and cher. ished 1t these two years? Because it was an amusing, even flatterin. picture of herself. or-because the photographer had happened to catch the John Curtis Morgan that she liked bes.-a boyish, frlenciy. eager Morgan. shorn of his court room dignity and austerity?
 A tiny voice deep within her heart whispered: You framed it and kept it before you these two years because it shows you and him together. Silly girl. Didn't you know?"
 Its not true" Nan denied ho,,y. I'll tear the thing up-see!" But her fingers refused to obey her. sobbing, she thrust the framed pic ture into a little drawer of the sec retary. jerked out the light and ran back to bed. She had forgotten the cream bottle and the dairyman's g bill-
 She made no further pretenst: then: did not open the heavy ooox on criminal law; jerked the chair of her bedside lamp and crushed her face into her pillow, to in- tensify the darkness. For shame had claimed her for its own.
 "In love with married man." The ugly phrase leaped at her Tn the darkness, and other ugly phrases, which had only waited for darkness, came hurtling after it. There was a queer comfort in let ting the ugly things claw at her, for the very pain and disgust kept her from complete realization. But when the unequal battle was over and her heart had abjectly accepted every arrow that shame held in its quiver, Nan found that not so cSsily was she to be let off. The love at which the arrows had been so sav- agely thrust was still alive in her heart, amazingly alive and growing with every moment. now that its existence had been acknowledged.
 This can't be mel" She struck her breast sharply, as if to kill the thing that was growing 50 rapidly in her heart. Not Nan Carroll: Why. I'm proud! I'm honorable. I've always been as square as a man. Nan Carroll simply can't be in love with another woman's husband-but, oh, I am. I am! Not with Iris Morgans husband-no. no! She makes him silly and small calls him Jack - no, no! don't love him! It's my own John Cur tis Morgan that love. the John Curtis Morgan I've helped to mak'. the man nobody knows but me.
 ''1s it such a sin to love him when I helped make him? She doesn't know him at all-my John Curtis Morgan. Three years-three years-and all this time I've been loving him and didn't know it."
 And then. because she couldn't help herself, she thought back over those three years in the new light of knowledge that had been forced upon her tonight. She saw herself again as she had been then-a deadly serious. high-minded girl Of 21, just graduated from the state university. where she had learned stenography along with more lofty academic subjects.
 A thin little girl. brown eyes shadowed with grief over her fathers death. long brown hair wrapped in heavy braids about her small head. Phi Beta Kappa Key shamefacedly hidden away in her trunk along with her diploma. The