Free The End of Innocence by Allegra Jordan Page B

to the Harvest Festival this Saturday in Concord?”
    â€œIs it any fun?” he asked.
    â€œThere’s a car race and I’ve been asked to be one of the drivers.”
    â€œA race?” He beamed. “I’d be delighted to come. We’ll take my cousin’s car.”
    â€œWill we have to take your cousin?”
    â€œMost certainly! I promise you’ll like him. See you then.” He waved, turned, and walked down the street.
    She brought her head back inside.
    â€œGood God, Helen!” said Peter from the doorway. He strode over to the window and shut it. “Have you none of the sense the good Lord gave you? Riley Spencer’s an engaged man.”

Chapter Five
Beck Hall
    Cambridge, Massachusetts
    Sunday Afternoon
    The news of von Steiger’s death and Arnold Archer’s arrest electrified the campus, spreading throughout residence hall lounges, from student to student, and in quiet murmurs among the staff. Wils had found a fresh broadsheet in the foyer of Beck Hall. He was shocked to find that the evidence that had forced the police to arrest Archer was his (Wils’s) very own gold watch, one that he’d lent to Max. But he frowned as he read the rest of the Crimson ’s report, filled as it was with innuendo and anti-German accusations.
    It sickened him to see that Archer’s family was launching something called a Patriots’ League in order to help the government identify other German spies. He hoped the police wouldn’t fall for such a ruse.
    He opened the door to his apartment and walked straight to his room. He threw the newspaper in the trash can. Max—a German spy, indeed! What filth.
    At least Arnold had been arrested. Despite Copeland’s protests about all of Arnold Archer’s family’s power, it seemed that the privileged were not above the law. Some justice might prevail in New England after all was said and done.
    Wils sat down at a thick oak table opposite his bed under a tall arched window and opened his books to get to work. If he were forced to leave classes due to the war, he preferred to withdraw with high marks. He didn’t want his classmates snickering about the stupid German among them. Most of his assignments were not difficult, they just required doing. The only one that really required thought was a poem for Professor Copeland’s seminar on advanced editing, and he’d found his topic.
    For this poem he had decided to write about fate: cruel, coldhearted, absolutely rotten, callous fate. Three blind women in the stars chopping up people’s lives with their nasty scissors. The kaiser with his stupid war gulping down Belgium, scraping for France—demanding power in exchange for blood. Prussian mothers throwing their sons into harm’s way for some hysterical and ill-founded mission.
    What was it with his own government? The war wouldn’t create freedom to pursue the noblest instincts of anyone’s soul. What was this business of Germany above all? And what if they accomplished that? What good would it do for humanity?
    Free will, my Aunt Frieda’s big bottom , he thought, whipping out a piece of paper and beginning to write.
    It had been easy at first, as he wrote, his anger fueling his art. But as his mind relaxed, as he spent his anger, the ditty from the girl’s poem last night crept into his mind and replayed itself over and over.
    Fall comes in shades of red
    And leaves in shrouds of white
    He recalled her looking down at him, startled. He laughed as he thought back to her cheeks’ reddening when she had detected the slightest whiff of criticism. Her raven hair looked so severe against those flushed cheeks.
    Yet it set off to perfection the white skin of her throat.
    He found several minutes had passed by the time he got back to work again. Such insecurity for one so beautiful, was his final judgment, as he picked up his pen again.
    This time he was interrupted by a loud noise