out of them, from which were reflected the gleaming red and green traffic lights, and the ne on lights of bars. While sho watched, the sweeping blue-white arc of the Empire State searchlight swung overhead; and from the nearby river came the low moan of a tugboat, groping its way through the swirl of wet snow.

All the excite-

I will miss all of this, Marion thought. ment of New York, the bigness, the new faces, new things; and I will surely miss my friends, Connie, Elaine, and all the others. But I will have new friends, she thought. And I will have my family around me; and instead of hig city sights I will have the stars, and the rose garden, and the rhythm of the crickets, which I always loved as a child. She smiled to herself, allowing her mind to wander through these memories; then suddenly she remembered something else; she felt again the slow pain of loneliness when surrounded by beauty. She remembered how far away the white stars seem to one alone; and how the chirping of the crickets sounded a trifle melancholy; and how the white swirling snow settling on the dark pines had made her weep, one time, long ago, drawing the tears out of her from the deep emptiness inside, where hor aloneness had gathered in one hard, aching lump. She recalled, too, that at the time she had not been alone. She had been visiting her son, and she was surrounded by people, by warmth, and by love; but even this could not melt the ice of this loneliness. For only belonging can do that, she thought. People can't do it; things can't do it; only belonging can do it. The right

person, the right place, the right love. She dropped the blind hastily, and turned, shaking her self mentally and walked back into the center of the room.

but she

It was at that moment that the idea came to her; perhaps her memories did it Marion couldn't tell thought the idea to be a good one. One last fling, she thought. I will have a little alone-party, by myself, to celebrato my long, lonely city days, as a fitting end to all the youthful endeavors, as an end to youth itself. I will be a lonely Lesbian for one last time, bofore I turn into a comfortable grandmother; a glam-

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