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seeing herself without the mask of cheerfulness she had so determinedly assumed. And as she looked, her eyes suddenly filled with tears--tears almost of self-pity. For the mirror told her, what she had scarcely realized, just how much she had suffered. Her eyes, usually so bright and merry, were dark and brooding. Her face looked thin and drawn, and her lips--those lips that had always seemed to smile even when her eyes were grave--had a pathetic, wistful droop, and there were lines, yes, actually lines, about them. "If Allen should see you," she told herself tremulously, "he probably wouldn't know you, Betty." Yet all the while she knew that if it were possible for Allen to see her or for her to see Allen, the face in the mirror would disappear as if by magic and the old Betty would return, for joy would have taken its place in her heart. With a little sob she turned from the mirror and switched off the light. The noise of the surf beating against the rocks came to her menacingly and the wind wailed shrilly around the house. "Oh, Allen, Allen!" she cried, stretching out her arms in an agony of entreaty. "Somewhere you must hear me calling you. Allen, come back to me, dear!" CHAPTER XXIII THE SHADOW LIFTS "I wonder if it is going to rain forever," cried Mollie petulantly, beating a restless tattoo on the window pane. "As if we weren't forlorn enough without the old weather making things a hundred times worse." "They say troubles never come singly, and I guess they're right," sighed Amy. She was sitting near the window in the brightest spot she could find--which was not very bright at that--knitting and trying her best not to think of Will. The result was that he was never for a minute out of her mind. "What's the matter, Grace--I mean more than usual?" Betty laid aside her book and looked over at Grace questioningly. "I don't believe you've said three consecutive words all day long." "And left to myself I wouldn't say that much," returned Grace moodily, adding, as they turned to stare at her: "It seems as if I never open my mouth these days but what I say something unpleasant, so I made up my mind last night that I wouldn't talk till I had something cheerful to talk about." "Then you're apt to be dumb till doomsday," retorted Mollie, with such a depth of pessimism that the girls had to smile at her. "What an awful thing to happen to a girl," said Betty, with a wry little smile.
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