book sentences. Her father's suicide, her mother's financial and emotional dependence, the lack of money for a much-wanted college education that went to her brother, the five-year friend who left her for another, the attempts to break away by working in other cities, that senseless futile half year in Florida, the loneliness for a confidante, the trial friendships and short-lived affairs with rebellious, city-freed, semi-alcoholic girls, until tonight. And mine the too critical divorced mother, the impossible ideals after a legshattering accident, the seven-month consuming, bewildering first love for a passive, religious girl studying art, only to rush, an adolescent still, into a penitential convent followed by the hopelessness of trying to adjust to the very material competitive world when nunhood became mentally and physically impossible. The disillusioning but strengthening six months with a psychiatrist, the short, sickly marriage to a boy approaching womanhood more than manhood what future could we offer each other with such backgrounds? Kay's Nordic-Indian face was lovely in the shadows the thirty-six years of accepting somehow softening like water does a leaf. Mine was only a sadangry mask of twenty-four years of "Why?" the unmanageable mixture of Swedish superiority and Italian impulsiveness.

"Do you know it's nearly 1:00 A.M.?" Kay groaned.

"I've a long walk.

Our hands tightened.

"Won't you stay over? I'll lend you a blouse tomorrow." The long happy wordless pause.

"Are you sure you want me to?"

Of course

but Kay And in

why not?" We both tried to rise, unsteady, sleepy. "Don't lean forward on that An awful clatter as I grabbed for her and chair in the ashes. "Damn that chair!! "Damn that chair!! I meant to warn you." that amber-lit room each others' arms. "No — it's silly between us we're only friends," and excited I escaped into the bright bath, away from what I most wanted,

The little blue convertible, hood down, bɔbbed out of traffic. I saw Kay behind the wheel, proud and a little possessive as she opened the door.

"Hi, darling." I jumped in.

"Hido you belong to me?"

"No one else."

"Home?"

"Home. There's a new poster in the subway. Your best guarantee is a good Brand.'" Kay's nose wrinkled at the pun.

"You're crazy.

"You know what a fellow at the office asked me today?"

"'Are you a lesbian, hey?'"

"Certainly not government employees are very tactful. He asked me why I wore this ring." I stuck my hand under her nose, and the wide silver band shone in the late summer sun. Kay bit it.

"Well, did you answer him?"

"He caught me by surprise. I think I said, 'Why does anyone wear a ring?" Then he looked rather at a loss and said he thought it might have some special meaning." Kay, regarding an identical band on her own hand, looked very wise. Bound in that shining circlet were two years of loving, of furious monthly fifteen-minute quarrels, of generous compromises. The temperamental, sexual, religious differences equalized, the lack of friends, time and sometimes money, accepted; all were melted into that little symbol of marriage. "Shall we" and "Can we," doubting but very desirous, had long since become a wondrous "Did we?" At last we had the peace that comes of finding one's place in another and in the world. Hands joined, not the striker and the fearful, but the lock and the key. "You know," I said suddenly, "I didn't mind being unable to tell him."

one

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