"I don't much care one way or the other", the girl said sadly, toying with her soup. "Why not?" Lorry said, still irritated. "What's bothering you?"

The girl kept her eyes on her soup. "Nothing," she said almost inaudibly, "except that I'm so very unhappy."

-

"Unhappy!" Lorry looked at her. "You? Don't make me laugh," she said sneeringly. "Yes, me," the girl said, annoyed at Lorry's apparent lack of understanding. "All my life I've been trying to find just a little happiness but it's all been so useless." Lorry looked softly at her. "Oh, come now," she said, feeling a little more compassionate. "What's standing in your way? You're young, pretty and you seem to be level-headed."

-

-

"It doesn't appear to be any lack exactly," the girl confided, "but I never seem to find anyone who is decent and fine. Someone who will love me for myself alone someone who will let me love them someone who will need me the way I need them." Her eyes seemed to cloud over with emotion. "I'd give my very soul to be able to find that special companion and be loyal forever." Openly tearful now, she gazed hopelessly into Lorry's eyes.

Lorry sat very still. She was experiencing a thousand emotions. She realized. only too well that the girl had struck the very source of her unhappiness. However, instead of warming toward the girl, Lorry's heart chilled. It was cold with self-pity. "Just another sob story," Lorry thought cynically. "All she wants is someone to sympathize. To heck with her!"

Having made up her mind to that, Lorry turned to the girl and snapped curtly and rather loudly, "Sorry, but I've got to go an important engagement."

Then she slid off the stool, grabbed her coat, and strode out looking neither right nor left, leaving the girl alone.

The girl, hurt and embarrassed, sat watching Lorry until she was out of sight, then turned and continued bravely to finish her soup, and leave as unnoticed as possible.

In the meantime, Lorry was moodily walking home to spend another depressing evening alone. The girl, too, headed homeward, to spend a similar evening.

But, of the two it was Lorry, who later in her empty room, cried out to herself profoundly and miserably, "Oh, God, why are you so cruel? Why do you persist in allowing me to be so terribly alone!!"

4.2

Ann Arthur

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