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

Babies cannot be kept under glass to avoid contact with harmful germs in the air. But you can help protect your baby's skin with antiseptic baby powder. Test above of leading baby powders reveals antiseptic superiority of Mennen. Width of black ring around center of round plates shows antiseptic effectiveness (Mennen extreme right). NEW BABY POWDER IS VITAL HEALTH AID SCIENCE has developed an improved baby powder that is a valuable health aid, not a mere "cosmetic." It is new Mennen Antiseptic Baby Powder. Being antiseptic, it helps keep your baby's skin free of many rashes in which germs play a part ...diaper rash, prickly heat, scalded buttocks, impetigo. Being smoother than other powders, because made by new "hammerizing" process, Mennen Baby Powder protects the skin better against painful chafing. Delicate new scent keeps baby lovelier. Best for baby, also best for you. Pharmaceutical Div., The Mennen Co., Newark, N. J., San Francisco, Toronto. 54 with me? I mean, I'm here on doctors' orders, to take the baths in the morning and spend the afternoon trying to walk the stiffness out of my leg." "Of course I will," I told him. "I'm ready for anything up to mountain climbing." He looked from my new jacket dress down to my spectator pumps and said appreciatively, "You're looking smart, Lisa. You always knew how to wear the right thing." How funny. My costumes did not seem like a masquerade to him. They were what he expected me to wear. I could feel natural, with him. But did I want to feel natural? Didn't you have to take risks, tread dangerous ground, for anything worth while? "You won't be climbing mountains with me for a while," he went on. "I'll have to work up to that." W/"E walked slowly that first after ™ noon looking into the windows of the souvenir stores that lined the main street opposite the stone buildings of Bath-house Row, listening to auctioneers selling hand-embroidered linen and imitation Oriental rugs, and even watching a horse race that was reproduced in electric lights on a board for people to bet on. Walking up the hill back to the hotel he told me how he had picked up the shrapnel fragments while he was attached to the British troops in Libya as a correspondent. They had invalided him home and now he was getting into shape to be sent on a mission for the American Army. What sort of mission I could only try to guess. There was no use wondering, and besides, time was slipping away. I wanted to get back to the hotel and dance with Stefan. Dancing, with him, became something lifted beyond what I had ever known dancing to be. Every movement he made was so full of art, of grace, that somehow the rhythm was communicated to me, and without conscious effort I took my part in its perfection. We never talked when we danced, and I talked little when we sat at our table or walked in the garden together. Instead I drew him out, made him tell me of Europe, of the cafes in Budapest where gypsy fiddlers could play with a magic that really changed the hearts of the people who listened. All this he told me in his soft deep voice, his strange foreign intonation, his precisely constructed sentences with their amusing mispronunciation, and I hardly cared what it was he said because the sound of his voice was music so new and so intoxicating that I was enchanted. But he was busy for long hours with his duties. I could not bear to watch him, to see his charming manners with the rich, overdressed women, to hear his soft voice when he talked to Maris Garveau. I felt better, getting away with Bill, away from the hotel, on our walks over the countryside. It was a relief to be free from the strain of acting my role. And even in the hotel, dining with Bill, I no longer felt like an outsider. Bill's newspaper experience had given him entre anywhere; he could talk to anyone with assurance, and plenty of people wanted to listen. Maris Garveau was always in the group that listened. One night she said to Bill, loudly, with her green eyes glancing from him to Stefan, "I've been trying so hard to get Lisa to give us an exhibition of Kentucky horsemanship, but she is the first Kentuckian I ever met who seems to have lost her taste for riding." I saw Bill look at me, with those clear blue eyes of his, and I wondered if he was disgusted with me. I could hear him laugh and ask, "Lisa, when were you ever in Kentucky?" XX E turned to Maris and I held my ■*--■■ breath. "Well, maybe you never knew a girl so kindhearted," he told her in his easy drawl. "Maybe you never met a girl who'd give up all her free time helping a fellow loosen up a crippled leg." I let my breath out slowly. I knew how he hated to talk about his injury, and I felt a deep sense of gratitude. When we were walking up Blue Hill the next afternoon I thanked him. He said gruffly, "It's true, isn't it? I'd never have pushed this far by myself. You've been a darned good scout to bother with a guy who's only half a man." "Why, Bill, it's been fun," I told him. "Has it?" He stopped on the path and looked at me. "Of course it has. And you're practically well. I bet you'll be climbing Old Baldy before we're through." He laughed harshly. "Not a chance. It would take a full day just to get to the top at my speed." His voice sounded heavy and tired. I had never heard it that way before. For the first time I realized what he must have gone through, what it must have done to his pride to lose his physical perfection. "I'm sure we could do it," I told Bess McCammon, heard on CBS' Romance of Helen Trent, is one of radio's gold star mothers. There's two on her flag — Bill, her older son is in Officers Training School while Tom is in an aeronautical school