Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1941-08-15
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bau syndieats-Nu Service

COMETIMES when you see
- a wife deceiving her hus-
~ band and enjoying a thrill
ing love affair with some other
man, the natural resentful ques-
ton is: how does she get away
with it?
Every smart suburb has few
of her; she is pretty, young, self
confident. She is also, the other
women think, INSCRIPTIONS and
common, even if her father is a
Judge and her name on the list
at the country club. But what
they think doesn't bother her. In
fact, she enjoys the knowledge
that she is annoying them.
Perhaps her lover is somebody's
husband; that makes it worse. In
small communities, where every
body plays bridge and golf and
tennis together, and gives parties
where the same men and women
are always meeting, suddenly
sparks will fly between some lovely
woman and some hitherto devoted
husband and father, and then the
mischief starts. They exchange
looks; he sends her book and she
returns a note; he takes an earlier
train home day or two later, when
she happens to be out in the garden,
in striped Stacks and broad gar
den hat. They talk.
And all the time the surface is all
brightness and decorum. She is
especially nice to her husband and
those two small boys; his two little
girls can see no change in Daddy.
His wife can, but, as I have men
toned in this column before, the
wife under these circumstances has
no chance. If she goes into jealous
RACES, everyone sympathizes with
Rob and thinks she is acting dis
gracefully. If she holds her head
high then and refuses to admit,
much less discuss, the affair, then
the pronouncement is that Sally has
always been a terribly cold, re-
served sort of wife. and you can't
blame poor Rob for looking for af-
lection elsewhere.
Must Pay Sooner or Later.
But, if it is any consolation to the
women who find themselves in
Sally's position, the other woman
never does get away with it. She
may for awhile, but sooner or later
she pays, and in the hundreds of
cases of the sort that have come to
my attention, it is interesting to note
that for every moment of Illicit
bliss she steals, she pays in many
hours of humiliation or embarraSS-
ment. Humiliation if the man pres
emily writes her a manly, honest
letter telling her that he loves her
as much as ever but that out of con-
sideration for dear little Sally, it
must all stop. She knows full well
as she reads the eloquent lines that
he has stopped loving her entirely,
and that the time to consider dear
brave little Sally was some years
earlier. But she has to accept the
rebuff, the lessened respect of her
friends, her husbands quiet, half
amused scorn, and her own lowered
sef-esteem. Painful all round.
The alternative is almost worse;
embarrassment. This is what she
experiences when she is tired to
death of the affair, bored to tears
by Sally Browns stupid husband,
furious at herself for having written
those poetic, playful, adoring letters
that he SO treasures and quotes, and
at her wits end to get rid of the
man. But no, he will go on tele-
phoning and writing and reproach-
ing her gently for change of mood,
and trying to work up quarrels
and reconciliations IN the old way,
and pleading for dates that she SIM
ply can't and won't give him.
Bored, Turns to Music and Love.
Here is letter from Elisa Davis
of Boston, who finds herself in an
annoying predicament.