The Bismarck Tribune

At five o'clock that Wednesday morning, just eight hours after Sandy had taken off on his flight to Nicaragua, Crystal was startled to wakefulness by a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I didn't mean to go to sleep," she faltered. "Oh! It's five o'clock! We must have talked until after four."

"We did!" Colin laughed, and there was something like peace in his tired black eyes, usually so harassed and furious. "But come along now, I'm going to blow you to a taxi -and put it on expense later!"

In the taxi she dropped tiredly, and quite matter-of-factly Colin put his arm around her, forcing her head gently into an easy position against his breast. She pretended to drowse again, but her heart was filled with joy. He'd go away and leave her, would he?

He dismissed the taxi before the Hathaway home and kept his arm about her shoulders as they trudged up the flagstone path as noiselessly as possible.

She was fumbling in her pocketbook for her key, and Colin was bending over her, ostensibly to help, when suddenly she was crushed against his breast. She was reeling dizzily when he released her, but before she could speak he was running away, like a man pursued by all the phantoms of hell. But the feel of his lips was upon hers, and she smiled with such ineffable tenderness that in that moment Crystal Hathaway was truly beautiful.

She slipped into bed for a while before taking her hot bath, but there was no question of sleep now.

For long minutes there was no room in her mind and heart for anything but "He loves me, and I love him. He loves me! He loves me! He loves me!"

kissed me, in spite of himself- But when those last words burrowed their way into her bliss, she lay very still, grew cold, although her blanket and down comforter were very warm ones.

"In spite of himself," she repeated. And suddenly she knew that she could take nothing more from Colin Grant--"in spite of himself." But why did he fight love so hard?

That was a foolish question, she told herself, for she knew the answer. But to make it even more clear, she deliberately forgot Crystal Hathaway for the minute and tried to become Colin Grant. Tried, in all honor, to see his view-point.

He had been married and it had been a failure-that marriage. Why? Because he and his "delectable" Celia had not been compatible? Partly that, of course, but wasn't the truth deeper than that? Colin Grant was a genius, born to be no woman's possession, but to belong to the world. Surely it wasn't selfishness and conceit for a genius to guard his sacred flame from every human being who might try to quench it.

"But I wouldn't trap him, and 'possess' him and chain him to one spot," Crystal's heart broke into the argument.

"Wouldn't you?" her mind taunted her. "Wouldn't you ask for a home and all that goes with it- creature comforts, social life, babies?"

"I must let him go," her heart decided-and Crystal's grief was too deep for tears.

NEXT: Ecstasy for Tony, despair for Crystal.

(Copyright, 1929, NEA Service, Inc.)