he might continue. But instead the end came, quickly. His body trembled for an instant, he took one long, quiet breath, and then... the shadow fell upon his face.

"John! John!" Gloria had screamed, too late. Running into the room, he had found the four watchers standing, bowed and shaken, beside the bed. He had stared long and unbelieving at his friend's lifeless face. Then as the shocking truth penetrated his mind, he had moved, with a face looking almost as lifeless, to stand by Gloria's side.

Now, there with John, under the blue arch of sky, Gloria found herself brooding upon Greg's final words. As if sensing her thought, John glanced down towards her.

"Gloria, did Greg say anything before he . . . I mean, while he ... while I was not there with him...?"

"Yes, John."

"What was it?" John's voice was hoarse with eagerness. "What did he say?"

Gloria looked up at his face wonderingly, but remained silent. Those last words of Greg's kept streaming through her mind. They might not have seemed at all remarkable under other circumstances, and with another cast of characters. But this . . . Gloria remembered the deep, passionate light that had flashed into Greg's eyes as he spoke John's name, the tremor that had crept into his voice. She thought of the five years during which John and her brother, both older than she, had been inseparable companions. She thought of her own love for John, scarcely more than adolescent, which she had been unable to impress upon him to even the slightest extent. She sighed with doubt and indecision, while John continued to stare at her with fierce expectancy. "Greg said..." she began, "Greg asked me to promise that I would be to you..

he had been. Those were just his words." John looked away, his throat drawn, his face a mask of grief. Both stood silent for a minute, before Gloria resumed.

"I want to keep the promise that Greg asked of me, John, but before I can do that, you will have to tell me... just... what he was to you. He seemed to mean something that . . . well, that I don't understand." There was another long silence while John clasped her slim, young shoulders with both hands. As the seconds passed, he hunted for words, looking from side to side in uncertainty and distress.

"Gloria... some day you will have the answer to what you want to know, but not now. I can't... now." He gazed long into her face . . . those wide-apart brown eyes, so like Greg's, the rounded forehead and tilted nose, like Greg's, the crisp, dark curls, the firm, soft lips-all like Greg's, too A hot flame of resentment burned through him, that she should look so much like Greg, and this at last melted into a dull, desperate ache for Greg, and then into tenderness for Gloria, who was sorrowing too. For a while, he felt tossed and almost torn apart by this conflict of emotions. Meanwhile, Gloria was searching his face, his eyes, trying to find a solution to the enigma.

The wind blew chill for a moment, and Gloria wrapped her coat more tightly around her. From the edge of town, a factory whistle blasted the hour of noon. Startled, they both glanced at their watches, and then John put on a matter-of-fact air.

"Let's go, Gloria," he whispered, and with a last look at the patch of earth and the fading flowers, they started for their homes.

or five years, John and Greg had kept their secret well. John, living by himself, had spent hours a day with Greg, many of these at Greg's home; yet not even Greg's parents, or sister, had guessed the ties that knit these two together. But where one went, the other followed, separated only during working hours, and on occasional nights. "What fine young men; what devoted friends," the townspeople had said, again and again. Now, with Greg no more, and John going about with a face ghostlike and unsmiling, they whispered, "How sad! But John is young... he will forget."

For weeks afterward, John was daily with Gloria and her mother and father, while each tried to comfort the others for their loss. Yet inwardly, he felt dried, empty, sexless-the spaces of his heart, which had contained his love for Greg, slowly closing. On week-ends, he would take long walks into the country, alone, following the paths which he and Greg had once explored. Then he would sit down quietly under a tree, and search in his heart, and in the skies, for Greg. Then, for a moment, he would regain the old tide of love, and peace, and contentment, and the old radiance would come back into his face, and he would look up, thinking that Greg was by his side. Then reality would point its unrelenting finger-reminding him that his arms were empty, and that he was quite alone. For a while, it seemed to him that he lived only for these occasional dreams, when he could briefly recapture and relive the treasured past. Yet as the weeks went by,