Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1943)

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It was almost all business, and yet sometimes we talked — talked about the war and the world — and the kind of world we wanted after the war. It was in those moments that it seemed there was a kind of secret kinship between us, more real because we would never speak of it. And then one night — one late spring night when the world seemed sweet and new — it happened, right out of a clear sky. We'd been working hard all evening, and all of a sudden he stopped dictating and looked at me and I saw a hint of laughter in his eyes. "Miss Prim," he said slowly, lingering over the silly little name so that I suddenly loved it, "you know what I think? I think you're lonely." I laid down my pencil and stared at him, hating the slow rise of color I felt flooding my cheeks. "Lonely?" I repeated. "Why, why what do you mean?" The laughter in his eyes moved down to his lips. "Because sometimes you look the way I feel." My heart felt as if it were rolling down a hill. In a very small voice I managed, "Maybe I am lonely." "You know what else I think?" He got to his feet, came around the desk and stood looking down at me. "It's spring, and spring's no time to be lonely. So I think that tomorrow night we ought to play hookey, you and I, and have dinner together." I'd dreamed this scene between us so many times. I'd dreamed how he'd ask me to go out with him, and how I'd answer, how with complete selfpossession I'd say, "Why, I'd love to, Mr. McAllister!" But now that the moment was here, I could only look up at him and then look quickly down again, and hear that voice of mine, still idiotically unlike my own, gasping, "You — and I? Why — I mean — " ITE rested his hand ever so lightly AX on my shoulder. He didn't know it, but with that hand he had reached into my heart to unlock the door that was barred against love, to unlock the door that was my safety, and leave me vulnerable, exposed to hurt. He smiled down at me. "You and I — yes. What's wrong with that, Miss Prim?" I grasped at the foolish little name, letting my mind hold firmly to it to keep my head above water. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong with it. It's a lovely idea." He turned back to his desk and picked up a letter, but his eyes were still on me. "Tomorrow night, then. Shall I pick you up at your home?" I almost said yes, and then I remembered Helen, and I remembered that boy I'd lost my heart to in high school, and another one who had moved into our neighborhood one summer, and . . . It wasn't going to happen again. It wasn't ever going to happen again. I didn't care what anyone thought, not Helen herself, nor mother, nor even Victor McAllister. "No," I said. "I — I have some shop ping to do first. Suppose I meet you afterward? Will that be all right?" He raised his eyebrows a little, but the smile was still there. "Of course," he said, "that'll be all right." I didn't sleep that night. I tossed and turned, and tried not to think, but my thoughts kept weaving a pattern in my mind. It was a picture of happiness. The love I had kept buried and hidden in my heart — perhaps now there was hope for its release. But I was afraid, too. It would be different, going out with him. It wouldn't be like the office. Suppose I froze up and couldn't find anything to say, the way I always did at Helen's parties? Suppose — but this mustn't go wrong. I wouldn't let it. AND it didn't. From the moment -^ Victor met me until he brought me home, long after mother and Helen were in bed, the evening was perfect — at least for me. Oh, there were silences— but they were the silences which don't need words to bridge them. And there were times when I couldn't find the right things to say, but there was laughter between us, and in my heart there was so much happiness that I couldn't even stop to wonder whether Victor was happy, too. All I knew was that I was having a wonderful time. And three nights later we went out again. That time I told him that I had to visit a friend of mine who was in the hospital, and would he mind very much picking me up there? On Sunday I invented an excuse to go to my cousin Esther's so that Victor could call for me at her house. By the following Wednesday I could hardly look Victor in the eye when I said — and tried to say it oh, so casually — in response to his invitation to go dancing, "I'm having dinner with a girl friend tomorrow night, but I'll be through early. Would you like to pick me up at her place?" I could hardly look at him because I knew he must sense that something was wrong. There'd been a difference in his attitude the last time we were out together. And the difference was more marked that Thursday night when we went dancing. Oh, it was heaven to be held in his arms, to move, two people like one person, about the floor with him in perfect time to the music. But between dances my old fear came back. I found it hard to talk to him, and this time Victor seemed to have no words, either, to fill the long silences. As he said good-by to me at the door that night, I thought for a moment that he was going to put the question in his mind into words, that he was going to ask me why I avoided having him come to our house, why I kept him from meeting my family. But in the end he said nothing— just dropped his hand to my shoulder for a moment in that light caress which had come to mean so much to me. That was Thursday night. On Friday Victor had time for nothing but business, and Saturday, too, passed without his saying anything about seeing me again. Sunday was a lonely day — almost as lonely as those long Sundays I used to spend, except I had something to remember — some TUNE IN THE BLUE NETWORK'S "MY TRUE STORY" Monday thru Friday— 3:15 to 3:45 P.M. (EWT). A new and different story every day! Stories about the lives of real peop. their problems, their loves, their adventures. 76 RADIO MIR