In Danger's Path Read Online Free

made of all your documents, including your Nansen passport and what they call a ‘narrative of the circumstances’ by which you wound up here. Then we stuff everything in an airmail envelope and send it off to Uncle Zach. Who will get a special law passed for us.”
    â€œReally, Ed? This can be done?”
    â€œReally, baby. It will be done.”
    Believe the dream. Why not? A dream is all I have .
    She kissed his chest.
    â€œBut we don’t have to do that right now,” Ed said. “And, anyway, I see that something else has come up we’re going to have to do something about.”
    â€œExcuse me?” Milla asked, looking up at him.
    He pointed to his midsection.
    â€œOh,” she said.
    â€œDoes that suggest anything to you?” he asked.
    Milla put her hand on him, rolled over onto her back, and guided him into her.
    [THREE]
    They had three months together.
    Without telling Ed, Milla went to her Russian Orthodox priest. Father Boris didn’t have a church. He supported himself exchanging one foreign currency for another. He’d even shaved his beard and wore a suit so that he would look like a respectable businessman. But before the Revolution, he had been a priest at St. Matthew’s in St. Petersburg. She didn’t remember him there—she had been too young—but he remembered her family, and he had buried both her father and her mother here in Shanghai with the holy rites of the church. Several times, when he looked particularly desperate when she saw him on the street, she had given him a little money, and once, a little drunk on the anniversary of her mother’s death, she had gone into the hem of her mother’s girdle and taken a stone from it—one of the small rubies—and given it to him “for the poor.”
    When they met, he called her “Countess”; and when she asked, he heard her confession. She was having carnal relations, she told him. And while she was sorry to sin, she was not ashamed, for she loved the man very much.
    Since she was not willing to swear an oath to break off the sinful relationship, Father Boris could not grant her absolution. But she believed him when he told her he was sorry. “Your sin is now between yourself and God,” he went on to say, “and you will have to answer to him.”
    That was all right with Milla. She didn’t see how a merciful God could be angry with her for being in love. God had to know that she and Ed would already be married, if that had been possible. And just as soon as it was possible, she would marry him, and be a good and faithful wife to him.
    In a sense, they were married. She didn’t feel like a mistress, even though, after the first week, she slept more in Ed’s apartment than her own.
    In time, a letter came from the congressman, acknowledging receipt of her documents, and advising Ed that he would move on the special bill as quickly as he could, but that it was going to take time.
    A very nice letter also came from Ed’s mother. “You must really be a special person,” she wrote, “because we had always assumed that Ed was married to the Marine Corps until we got the wire from him announcing your engagement…. Meanwhile,” the letter continued, “we’re anxiously waiting for you to come to the States. When you arrive, why don’t you plan on living in our house with us, for the time being at least. There’s plenty of room, and I look forward to the company.” She signed the letter, “with much love to my new daughter-to-be.”
    With one exception, she didn’t meet any of Ed’s fellow Marines. She understood why. Theirs was an inappropriate relationship in the eyes of the United States Corps of Marines.
    The one Marine she met, a corporal, was a very strange young man. One morning Ed asked her if she would prepare a little dinner party for this young man. The next day he was returning to the