she was happy completely and exquisitely alive and happy and happy to be happy as she told her best friend Belinda Ruth when they met for lunch one windy afternoon Belinda I'm happy I'm really happy

she kept repeating with an ecstatic look in her eyes that mystified Belinda who as yet had never tasted the budding sweetness of love. Belinda was a younger girl with red hair and eyes that burned to know all the secrets of life but received her friend's news of being happy really happy with a coldness half comical half jealous and did not even know why herself acting entirely on an impulse

to be difficult in the face of Natalie's

unexpected good spirits on this day when the wind was blowing and making her red hair look even worse.

So who is he she asked with some sarcasm but Natalie's heart was too full it was flowing over with its own sweet fullness and had no room in it for the coldness in Belinda's voice and eyes at her own happiness, smiling a secret smile to herself

she hurriedly tried to cover up the feelings she knew were in her own eyes and laughed that she wasn't going to tell and who knows she might not be talking about a man and might even be a lesbian

2

Belinda was shocked as any decent girl would

be but still halfway interested

in spite of herself at what a thing to say

and who knows indeed Natalie had a way

about her that sometimes made you suspect but

tried to conceal what she was thinking behind a bored

smile as when one has heard the same joke

before and is just being polite but

one

8