Romance Classics Read Online Free PDF

home, quietly and comfortably and peacefully and rob a man who’s been through what Tip has. You and I — our happiness isn’t important any more. We owe him a debt, Gerry — we’ve got to pay it, or never know another moment’s peace as long as we live.”
    There was a terrible conviction in his words. They fell on her heart with a pain that was, in itself, bitter conviction. Phil was right.
    After a moment, Phil said very softly, “You see, darling? That’s the way it’s got to be.”
    And dumbly, unable to form words, looking up at him, her eyes acknowledged the bitter fact of that. There was a moment that seemed to stretch endlessly, while their eyes clung and their hearts stood there, for each to see; in that age-long moment that was only seconds, they said good-bye to each other, good-bye to the future they had planned with such high hearts.
    Phil turned then, without a word, and went out of the house, and the sound of his footsteps on the path echoed back with a hollow ring that was the loneliest sound Geraldine had ever heard in all her life.
    She heard the sound of the telephone without being consciousthat she had heard it; she heard the sound of her mother’s voice answering the telephone, and though she heard quite clearly, her numbed brain was unable to separate the words, to understand anything of what was being said.
    It was not until Beth came and put an arm about her that Geraldine became conscious of what her mother was saying. Beth was white and stunned and anxious looking.
    “That was Mrs. Parker, darling,” she said gently. “She wants to see you.”
    “Oh, no, Mother — I
can’t!”
    “I tried to put her off, darling, but Mrs. Parker’s not easy to divert!” said Beth uneasily. “I told her you were not able to come out there, and that you had collapsed. So she said she would come here, and hung up before I could try to stop her.”
    Geraldine stood hopelessly for a moment, until Beth was holding her.
    “You’ll
have
to see her, darling, sooner or later, and it might as well be now,” she soothed anxiously. “Do you want Dad and me to sit in? We won’t let her bully you, darling.”
    Geraldine made herself smile wryly and kiss her mother’s cheek. “Of course I can’t go to pieces. It’s only that — Oh, Mother, I’m so —
lost.
I don’t know which way to turn. I’m terribly glad for Tip — so very, very glad! It’s only that I’ve got to get used, all over again, to thinking of him — to knowing that he is alive.”
    “Of course, darling, as if I didn’t understand! You run up and wash your face and pull yourself together, and Dad and I will hold Mrs. Parker at bay until you are ready to face her,” Beth soothed her and at last Geraldine moved towards the stairs and to her own room.
    She moved like an automaton. The first days after word had come from the War Department that Tip’s ship had gone down in the Saigon River, with only a handful of survivors being picked up, and that Tip must be presumed dead, she had had this dazed, stunned feeling — a wild, frightening pain that she had not even tried to fight. And tonight, she was shaken to the very depths of her being at the thought that Tip was alive; but there was, too, the bitter agony of knowing that her first young, unquestioning love, that had been more than half youth and physical attraction,had been swallowed up in her grown-up, complete love for Phil.
    Scarcely knowing what she did, she changed from her dark traveling suit and showered and dressed in a becoming deep blue housecoat, her hair brushed high on her head. She tried to repair the ravages of tears with lipstick and powder and rouge; and when at last she went down the stairs, she looked outwardly composed, if one did not notice too closely her wide, dazed eyes or the tremulous red mouth.
    The murmur of voices from the living room told her that Mrs. Parker was here. Geraldine paused and braced herself for what must follow, before she entered the