The Other Side of Midnight

iffly. "And I don't come off like the Virgin Mary." I come off like the Virgin Catherine. Dear old Saint Catherine. All she had done was to move her holy headquarters to Washington. Nothing else had changed. She was still doing business at the same old church.

During the next six months Fraser was away a good deal. He made trips to Chicago and San Francisco and to Europe. There was always enough work to keep Catherine busy, and yet the office seemed lonely and empty with Fraser gone.

There was a constant stream of interesting visitors, most of them men, and Catherine found herself barraged with invitations. She had her choice of lunches, dinners, trips to Europe and bed. She accepted none of the invitations, partly because she was not interested in any of the men but mostly because she felt that Fraser would not approve of her mixing business with pleasure. If Fraser was aware of the constant opportunities she declined, he said nothing. The day after she had had dinner with him at his home he had given her a ten-dollar-a-week raise.

It seemed to Catherine that there was a change in the tempo of the city. People were moving faster, becoming more tense. The headlines screamed of a constant series of invasions and crises in Europe. The fall of France had affected Americans more deeply than the other swift-moving events in Europe, for they felt a sense of personal violation, a loss of liberty in a country that was one of the cradles of Liberty.

Norway had fallen, England was fighting for its life in the battle of Britain and a pact had been signed between Germany, Italy and Japan. There was a growing feeling of inevitability that America was going to get into the war. Catherine asked Fraser about it one day.

"I think it's just a question of time before we get involved," he said thoughtfully. "If England can't stop Hitler, we're going to have to."

"But Senator Borah says..."

"The symbol of the America Firsters should be an ostrich," Fraser commented angrily.

"What will you do if there's a war?"

"Be a hero," he said.

Catherine visualized him handsome in an officer's uniform going off to war, and she hated the idea. It seemed stupid to her that in this enlightened age people should still think they could solve their differences by murdering one another.

"Don't worry, Catherine," Fraser said. "Nothing will happen for a while. And when it does happen, we'll be ready for it."

"What about England?" she asked. "If Hitler decides to invade, will it be able to stand up against him? He has so many tanks and planes and they have nothing."

"They will have," Fraser assured her. "Very soon."

He had changed the subject, and they had gone back to work.

One week later the headlines were filled with the news of Roosevelt's new concept of lend-lease. So Fraser had known about it and had tried to reassure her without revealing any information.

The weeks went by swiftly. Catherine accepted an occasional date, but each time she found herself comparing her escort to William Fraser, and she wondered why she bothered going with anyone. She was aware that she had backed herself into a bad emotional corner, but she did not know how to get out of it. She told herself that she was merely infatuated with Fraser and would get over it, but meanwhile her feelings kept her from enjoying the company of other men because they all fell so far short of him.

Late one evening as Catherine was working, Fraser came back to the office unexpectedly after attending a play. She looked up, startled, as he walked in.

"What in hell are we running here?" he growled. "A slave ship?"

"I wanted to finish this report," she said, "so you could take it with you to San Francisco tomorrow."

"You could have mailed it to me," he replied. He sat down in a chair opposite Catherine and studied her. "Don't you have better things to do with your evenings than get out dull reports?" he asked.

"I happened to be free this evening."

Fraser leaned back in the chair, folded his fingers together and dropped them under his chin, staring at her. "Do you remember what you said the first day you walked into this office?"

"I said a lot of silly things."

"You said you didn't want to be a secretary. You wanted to be my assistant."

She smiled. "I didn't know any better."

"You do now."

She looked up at him. "I don't understand."

"It's very simple, Catherine," he said quietly. "For the past three months, you've really been my assistant. Now I'm going to make it official."

She stared at him, unbelievingly. "Are you sure that you...?"