porarily in a region out of touch with cables;
the service might have dropped a link somewhere. One could imagine
possible explanations. But it was easier to imagine other things. And
the fact remained that, since he didn't answer, she couldn't get
away from a horrible, paralyzing sense that he wasn't there.

It didn't do any good to try to run from that sensation; there was
nowhere to run. It blocked every avenue of thought, a sinister shape
of dread. The only help was in keeping very, very busy. And even then
one couldn't stop one's thoughts traveling, traveling, traveling along
those fearful paths.

At last Elliott knew how the others felt about Pete. She had thought
she understood that and felt it, too, but now she found that she
hadn't. It makes all the difference in the world, she discovered,
whether one stands inside or outside a trouble. The heart that had
ached so sympathetically for Bruce knew its first stab of loss and
recoiled. The others recognized the difference; or was it only that
Elliott herself had eyes to see what she had been blind to before? No
one said anything. In little unconscious, lovable ways they made it
quite clear that now she was one with them.

"Perhaps we would better send for them to come home from Camp Devens,"
Father Bob suggested one day. He threw out his remark at the
supper-table, which would seem to address it to the family at large,
but he looked straight at Elliott.

"Oh, no," she cried, "don't _send_ for them!" But she couldn't keep a
flash of joy out of her eyes.

"Sure you're not getting tired?"

"Certain sure!"

It disappointed her the least little bit that Uncle Bob let the
suggestion drop so readily. And she was disappointed at her own
disappointment. "Can't you 'carry on' _at all_?" she demanded of
herself, scornfully. "It was all your own doing, you know." But how
she did long at times for Aunt Jessica!

Of course, Elliott couldn't cry, however much she might wish to, with
the family all taking their cues from her mood. She said so fiercely
to every lump that rose in her throat. She couldn't indulge herself at
all adequately in the luxury of being miserable; she couldn't even let
herself feel half as scared as she wished to, because, if she did,
just once, she couldn't keep control of herself, and if she lost
control of herself there was no telling where she might end--certainly
in no state that would be of any use to the family. No, for their
sake, she must s