sketches and paintings until I can tell you where to send them? Right now I have no idea of where I'll be going..."

"Sure, Ted..."

Ted grasped Roger's shoulders and held him off at arm's length, the muscles of his jaws flexing. "Go downstairs, Roger. I'll never get my packing done, with you so near. . . and Roger... I won't write you here. You might never get the letter anyway, and it would just make things more difficult for you. But you'll hear from me, some way, some time. Now, let's say goodbye." Roger's head was bent very low. He was at the point of tears, and he did not want Ted to see him cry. His "Goodbye, Ted," was almost inaudible as he turned and left the room.

Back in his own room, he had closed the door and thrown himself upon his bed. From Ted's quarters, he could hear the rattle of coat hangers, and finally the sharp click of trunk fastenings. He heard Ted make one trip down the stairs and out the front door to his roadster, and then another. On the third trip down, Ted's footsteps paused outside his door for a moment. This must be the final leavetaking, he thought. The footsteps went on and down the stairs, Roger's heart following them. He heard the engine start, with its familiar chug. With straining ears, he followed the sound of the motor down the street, until it diminished into silence.

Roger's reflections began emerging into the present. He had gone downstairs and found his mother in the kitchen. The memory of her strident words still floated through his imagination. ". . . unnatural monstrous . . . put you out like I did him..." He focussed again on his reflection in the mirror. He thought of his mother back in the old days when his father had been with them . . . a pretty, affectionate woman... but now so unlovely and unlovable. The years had turned him into a dutiful son, neither loving nor hating. He sighed and went out the back door into the yard. The afternoon sun was hot, and he squatted in the shade of a tree. For many minutes he was lost in reveries of the past . . . in uncertain visions of the future.

"Roger... the ashes! ... don't forget they must go to the dump tomorrow." Anna's voice knifed its way painfully into his dreams. It conveyed its usual mood of possessiveness, and now, almost a note of triumph. Ashes he thought, dully. He heaved himself to his feet and stumbled toward the backyard incinerator. He stripped off his shirt and hung it over a fence. The powerful muscles of his back rippled as he seized a shovel and began filling a huge ash can. Blowing ashes sifted in flecks of gray upon his bronzed skin... he spluttered and coughed as the wind swept them into his face.

It was the end of summer, and two months since Ted had left. Roger had received no word. A kind of panic had taken possession of him. He wondered whether this brief, unfulfilled love, which had touched him into such passionate tenderness, might wither and vanish. Every day, like an automaton, he went to his job at the town's general store. Every day he watched for the mail. He had thought at first that Ted might write him at the store. He had even told the postman, whom he knew well, to be on the lookout for a letter for him, but no letter came. The panic had finally turned into a kind of resigned despair. No. Ted would not write, he told himself. Ted was trying to forget. Perhaps HE had better try to forget. Recently his mother had become civil to him, he thought, almost kind. Generous in his own nature, he could not realize that she was merely becoming complacent and secure in her victory.

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