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Page 133
no chances on Mrs. Bates forbidding those meetings. Linda had half realized that she liked Peter better than any other man she knew, but when she found herself comparing others to him and finding them less satisfactorythat was dangerous.
Dangerous . . . What a peculiar word to use. How could there be any danger in falling in love with Peter? Irritably, she pushed the idea away. There was danger in falling in love with anybody.
Life became quite a whirl. There were lunches with Peter, dinners with Donald, appointments with shipping clerks and travel agents, shopping for Mrs. Bates, herself, and Gertrude, packing and labeling, as well as the ordinary duties of answering the mail, helping with entertaining, and reading to Mrs. Bates. Linda fell into bed each night, asleep before her head touched the pillow. She was too busy to realize that she had not been bored for a moment in several weeks. She was certainly too busy to worry about drugged boxes of candy and shadows on a stairwell. The last night Linda spent in her bed in Mrs. Bates's apartment, she was so tired she never finished buttoning her pajamas.
By the time Linda closed the door to Mrs. Bates's compartment on the night ferry-train from London to Paris, she felt as if she had been spinning at high speed while careening drunkenly from one spot to another like an

 
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