The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1942-04-10

NNE OF the most awkward
questions that youth can
- ask age is the one a girl
named Vera asks me this morn
ing. Vera's letter comes from a
Georgia town; she evidently be-
longs to a somewhat prominent
family, for she was given four
years at an expensive Pennsyl-
vania college, and also tells me
that she has had two visits in
California "where Mother and
Dad usually 60 every winter"
vera's problem is this: When she
was 10 she had love affair, en-
tirely unknown to the family, and
extremely serious. For three months
she and her sweetheart were pas
sionate lovers, then Vera's feeling
waned, and she had an uncomforta-
BILE time extricating herself from
jays still exacting devotion.
Don't think / didn't pay for my
early foolishness," writes Vera. II
did, when it came time to try to
break engagements with Jay, to cut
down on letters and meetings, to
make him see that I was through.
The day he came to me and said
that he realized at last that it was
all over, and would trouble me no
more, was actually one Of the hap
piest of my life.
1.-TWO years later, when I was
glorying in college days, Jay mar
ried, and felt nothing but utter
relief. Novels for generations have
talked of the shame and danger of
love affairs, but my real difficulty
and tragedy, instead of being that of
trying to hold my lover, was that of
getting rid of him.
Fell in Love Again.
IT am now II. Last year I met a
man whose fineness, dignity, intelli-
gence made me feel that he was set
apart from the ordinary run Of men.
We are deeply in love and were to
have been married this June. Rob-
ert is a church member, indeed once
studied for orders, and has an al
most fanatic sense of honor.
meanwhile jays wife has died,
and he had a lovely daughter Of Ave,
who is one Of the pupils in the
school where I teach. So that I
have seen him again once or twice.
He is much developed from the inn
pulsive boy I knew eight years ago,
with all his old charm and high
spirits.
"As Roberts wife I would have
wealth, position, and the compan-
ionship of man who is bound some
day to be conspicuously successful
in his profession. Jay is just one
business man among many. But Jay
wants to marry me, and Robert feels
that it might be right.
perhaps the path should take
seems smooth and obvious to you,
but I can assure you ! am harassed
and undecided to the point of almost
going out of my mind. 1t has never
seemed to me possible that any
woman could be in any doubt about
which man she wants, but the cir
cumstances here are peculiar, thanks
to my little-girl folly, and / really
don't know what to do. Robert says
he will leave it entirely to my con-
science, and that he knows I will
decide rightly, and yet-while that
may make you smile with the idea
that he wouldn't mind getting out Of
it entirely himself, I know that, at
So, he has never cared for any wom-
an but me, and would be deeply
stricken at losing me-.
Robert Worries.
ellis brother tells me he cannot
sleep nights for worrying over this
thing; the brother doesn't know all
the circumstances Robert has had
the old house completely modern
lied; he has talked to me Of our
life together as though it were q
dream too precious ever to be real