HE had come upstairs after her walk to the bus-stop, and had caught then,

as now, without meaning to, a glimpse of herself in the glass. "How have I changed," she had thought, "that suddenly a woman wants to love me?" For she had no doubt of it. From the moment her old friend, Bev Johnson, brought the gracious and smiling young woman into Ruth's livingroom, and Lisa looked unwaveringly into her eyes, she knew.

It had been a casual evening, on the surface. Bev, unaccountably blind, had kept the conversation going in the new channels down which her life now flowed. Once Bev had been a part of that very painful period in Ruth's girlhood. Now she had metamorphosed into a quite ordinary person, biased most strongly against the very things she had once defended. She had told Ruth, on the telephone, that Lisa had once been one of "the crowd" long before she, Ruth, had come into it. But, she assured, Lisa was changed now, the same as they, or she would never ask to bring her over.

Now, as Lisa's eyes sought her's, again and again, through the evening, Ruth knew that Bev was mistaken. There was something indefinable about Lisa. Her features were irregular and unfeminine, but her voice was sweet and soft. Her attire was simple, devoid of frills, but not severe. Her hair was smartly short and she wore just a faint trace of make-up. When Bev ran out of small talk, Lisa took over and related, with charm and humor, her experiences as a teacher of the third grade in her present home-town in Virginia. She spoke with a captivating accent that was the result of her transplantation from the North to the South.

"Then you are only visiting up here?" Ruth asked.

"Yes. Aunt Margaret thought she could endure me for the summer,” Lisa replied. "I had such a nostalgia for the old city."

When it was late and they had to leave, Ruth walked with them the long block up to the bus. In the darkness of the tree-lined street, Lisa's hand found Ruth's and held it tightly. Bev, walking on Lisa's other side, was blissfully unaware. They parted with plans for a swimming party the following weekend, but Ruth knew she would be seeing Lisa before then.

TOW, turning away from her mirror, she prepared for bed in a fever of anticipation. The light out, she lay unsleeping, trying to realize the happiness she felt. Lisa was going to love her. It was for this she had suffered the pain and frustration of her high-school years. Well, not really. She didn't believe in fate, really. But it was satisfying to feel now that she could go to Lisa clean and whole, free of a background of promiscuity.

She reminded herself, sharply, that she was not guiltless. That it was only because none of "the crowd" had ever made a gesture toward her, that she had remained untouched. She had had her cravings; immature ones, it is true, but her inhibited nature had never allowed her to reveal them. She was forced to wait for the approaches that never came. Thus retrospecting, her new joy was flavored with bitterness as she recalled the conversation with Bev that day in the Sweet Shoppe near school. It had been a different Bev then, a Bev with boy-cropped hair and a tailored shirt. They sat facing each other across the small table, Ruth also with her hair cropped, newly, and wearing the closest thing to a boy's shirt her mother would allow. She remembered that she smoked her first cigarette that day, and that she was glad to be able to pretend that the smoke bothered her eyes when Bev's words brought her so close to tears.

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