If a knife had swung from the ceiling and lanced my body I could not have felt more anguished.

I tottered and almost fell from the chair. Knowing how she felt, we could not let Beth know the transfusion had already been given. So I pretended it had not yet taken place.

"Beth," I pleaded. "Let me help you!"

She stiffened, and stared up at me.

"I don't want your blood. I'd rather die than have that kind of blood in my veins."

I leaned nearer to her and reminded, "We had the with same parents, Beth. What's blood?" wrong my Beth turned her head and hid her face against the pillow. "I don't want your kind of blood." The muffled words came through to me like hammer blows on my heart.

Hal stepped over, took me by the elbow, the way one picks up an object one preferred not to touch. He guided me toward the door. "Please go," he said, frowning. "You upset Beth."

"I only want to help her."

"She must never know you were her blood donor," he insisted, his lips tightening. "Promise you'll never tell her."

"But this is-is absurd," I protested, almost on the verge of hysteria.

Then Hal gave it to me straight. He looked into my tear filled eyes and said coldly, "Beth doesn't want any blood from you. Even though you're a married wo man now, your sister can't forget about you and Jan.” In silence I absorbed the full effect of the poison of intolerance in what Hal said.

Completely downcast I left the room.

Hurt by my sister's attitude toward me, I walked all the way home. Trying to think.... But I was only feeling. Beneath the wound my sister had just given me— memories of Jan's love stirred.

I walked faster, welcoming the keen whip of the ocean wind across my face. My brain told me, "You are a married woman. But my heart cried out, "I'm Jan's girl!"

At that moment I realized that my longing for Jan and love of her had now become more than a memmy ory-it was an obsession. Even then when I tried to decide how I could handle it, memories surged over the dam of the past and washed away all sense of the present.

It wasn't until Granger took me in his arms that night that I remembered I was a married woman.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Before Beth left the hospital two more transfusions were necessary. My husband was the blood donor for both.

When Beth returned home, her darling baby boy was the axis around which everything revolved. Neither Beth, Hal nor I ever referred to the way Beth had talked to me in her room at the hospital. I knew that all three of us were honestly trying to forget it.

Granger showed a terrific interest in Beth's baby. "Little lad," he said, rubbing his palm across the tiny bald head. "You're partly mine. You've got some of my blood in you.'

9.9

The way Granger spoke made me realize that if I were as good a wife as I wanted to be, now was the time to bear a child for my husband.

That night I told Granger, "Let's have a baby." "That's what I wanted to hear you say,' mitted, smothering his face against my breast.

he ad-

A week later Granger went to Denver on one of his business trips. I had gone with him on such trips twice