They were on Mother's side, and urged me to marry Bob as the only answer to my problem. How wrong could they be?

Mother behaved as if being as I am, was a personal insult to her. One for which she wouldn't forgive me. Then came the miserable scene when Mother burst into my room in the middle of the night, wakened me from sleep and said,

"Melba, do you realize you may become pregnant?" My eyes popped open and I shivered as if chipped ice had been dumped on me.

Mechanically she took my blue bathrobe from the back of a chair and tossed it to me.

I sat up, huddling into it, my teeth chattering. Mother pulled the heavy monk's cloth drapes across the window to shut out the chill fog. Then she sat on the side of

bed.

In the white light of the globe in the ceiling, her face, shiny with cold cream, looked older than I'd ever seen it. The crow's feet showed at the corners of her eyes, and her dark bed-tangled hair hung limply about her sallow face.

My heart squeezed. I hadn't hurt her intentionally by being honest. But she had been hurt. I was sorry.

"For the sake of our family, you must marry Bob right away!" she demanded, squeezing her hands together in her lap. "That way-nobody will know you conceived before you were married."

"Me, have a baby?" The voice that said it didn't sound like my own.

Mother nodded, shivered and pulled the collar of her rose bathrobe high about her ears.

I had always been fond of children. But I never thought of having any of my own. I hated Bob. Galvanized by that hate, I said roughly,

"I'd rather have my baby without being married, than to have to live with Bob and acknowledge him as

its father!"

"I won't let you disgrace this family!" The fury in Mother's eyes made me wonder for one crazy instant if she intended to kill me. Her face flooded with redness. She leaped up and ran from my room.

Disturbed, I pulled on a tan skirt and orchid sweater, and slid my feet into tan mocassins. I wrapped a long, dark coat tightly about my body, and tiptoed out of the house. I thought the front door creaked as I closed it. Either it was only my imagination, or Mother, Beth and Hal didn't hear it.

Alone in my misery, I stumbled slowly along the white sands where in our happiness Jan and I had often run. Tonight the air was chill, and sharp wind slashed against me. Breathless, I finally stopped and stood upon a flat-topped rock, looking seaward, as Jan and I, hand in hand, had often stood.

In my desperate aloneness I watched gray fog scarves waving along the shore.

My heart cried, "Jan!"

Wind-shipped waves crashing against the beach seemed to echo with a roar, "Jan!"

My arms reached out and closed on emptiness. Tears ran down my cheeks. Finally, I stumbled home.

I awoke the next morning and looked out of my bedroom window, expecting to see Jan hurrying up the path to the house. I would tell her what a bad dream I'd had... Then...I remembered it was no dream. Jan had gone away. The brightness went out of the morning sunlight. For me it might have just as well been dense fog. I choked and jabbed my wrist against my mouth, to stifle screams that were rising in my throat.