you and that horribie girl branded yourselves with, carrying on like you did," she sniffed in scorn. "If you get married to Jim, as any decent girl would, you'll be a respectable married woman and we can hold up our heads again...." The pressure only served to mix Hazel up. Still, anything would be preferable to her mother's hounding and watching her every minute.

To add to her grief, Tommy had never written since moving away. Eventually this apparent betrayal had weighted the scales in favor of Jim. It wasn't until after the wedding that her mother confessed contritely that a number of lotters from Tommy had been burned "to save Hazel embarrassment." They came from another city.

Perhaps it wasn't Jim's fault that he brought none of the tender glory that Hazel had wistfully hoped for to their marriage. Nor that he couldn't understand and was impatient of her lack of response to his rough demands. But by the time he left for a new duty station two weeks after the wedding, Hazel already knew that the new relationship was empty of meaning for her.

Nor was it too odd that, left alone most of this first year, she should respond to the questing look in Pat's brown eyes that were so very much like Tommy's.

It wasn't too long before Pat began coming downstairs at seven to walk home with Hazel after her work was done. Often she would invite the lonely girl in to have coffee or a glass of wine. Pat, raised since babyhood in the downtown hotel, appreciatively drank in the homey atmosphere of the little apartment.

Sometimes they went to movies together, and soon, without meaning to, Hazel realized they were spending almost every evening of the week together. There were times when Pat talked of her studies. She was majoring in psychology, and Hazel would listen wide-eyed to the amazing knowledge about interesting things that the older girl was acquiring. There were other times when Hazel told Pat haltingly of her life before her marriage to Jim, of the crowded small home across town, of the father who drank too much, and the mother who nagged. But she never mentioned Tommy.

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