"Hyra?" Lee's drowsy voice a tentativa xhisper.

"Yes? I thought you were asleep." Hyra spoke without stirring.

"I was.

I heard you tossing. Don't you feel well?" "Yes, of course. Go back to sleep, I'm all right."

Silence again then, but Myra felt comforted in Lee's solioitude. This, at least, was one thing that had not changed. So much else had. Not overtly, at first, except for the one evening a week Loe went out alone. Otherwise their placid lives went on...Myra occupied with her job, hor absorpti on with cooking, sowing and womanlike things. Leo, with bor værk, her love for carpentering, fixing and building things around the house. And, of course, their friends, (her friends, Myra thought, wryly) who cam once a week for bridge.

Her friends, who, until that evening six months ago she had considered Loo's friends, too. Bow strange, sho mused, that it is possible to live with some one for so long and not to know, not to guess at all, the pressures going on inside. She had been ∞ confident that Leo WLS completely satisfied with their way ɗ life. Granted that Loe was a generation or two younger than my of the others in their group, she seemed, with her unusual maturity, to accept, to fit in, and be accepted. Then, suddenly, that avoning the quarrel. Lee had seemed mœosc, uncommunicative through the game, and when every cas left at midnight, she had slammed the offee cups into the sink and said "Thank God that's over!"

Hyra looked at her, astonished. "That in the world is the mattor with you!" she had oxclaimed. It all came out then.

Loe was sick and tired of the whole stuck-in-the-aud bunch, She was tired of bridge and coffee and cake and televi si on. She wanted, neoded, the company of people her om age. She wanted out...some kind of OUT.

"Are you sick and tired of m, too, Lee?" Kyra asked.

"Don't be ridiculous."

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