LIFE CLASS

(Continued from page 11)

warning she began to sob, dry silent hurting convulsi ons that came from the very depths. She stumbled across the boulevard with the light mercifully green, knowing half way over she hadn't looked to see...

On the far corner a low slightly roughened voice said, "Hello. Didn't know you came this way."

Garda! Van gasped and began to shake. Garda, a thin boy in jeans a leather coat, with a lighted cigarette dangling between her fingers. But how? She must have spoken aloud, for the answer came: "There's a back way out of there I always take if the wolves are really howling. You catching this bus too?"

"No, I live on down a quarter mile, one of those little old houses under the hill."

"Mind if I come home with you for awhile? That crew-out character knows where I live, and I don't like to be reachable for awhile after classes. Not alone, that is. My roommate moved out this week, got a new job to hell and gone across town.

No husband now, then!

Van tasted blood from her bitten lip before she said, low and bitterly, "I wouldn't ask my worst enemy home with me. My half-sister, she's 40, won't stand for lipstick or pants or smoking or drinks even beeror radio jazz. Or guests, unless they're her own choice. She wouldn't stand for art classes, either, if she could keep her claws in me around the clock."

"My god! Why do you stand for her? I'd move out so fast-"

"I suppose it's partly because she kept me after my mother died till I could get a job, and now she needs my board money unless she takes roomers again. ...But I guess, to be honest, it's mostly because I'd hate so to live in a

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