light into the interior. She found a match and lighted two candles on the table. Her face in the candlelight looked white and drawn. A great pity for her welled up in the boy's heart. She seemed to him the loneliest being he knew. He glanced at the closed door of Eden's room. Was Eden awake, he wondered.
Alayne said: "Wait a minute, Finch. I must get that book I want you to read." She went into her room. "Goodness, what a muddle I have here!"
"Oh, thanks! But don't trouble now." The laundry list decorated with postage stamps caught his eye. What the dickens? He peered at it, puzzled. Some of Eden's foolery, he'd bet. The stamps not used ones either. If they went away and left that pinned to the wall, he'd come and get the stamps.
When she returned, after what seemed a long while to Finch, what little colour she had had in her face had been drained from it. She laid the book on the table.
"There," she said in a strained voice, "I hope you will like it." She went on, with an odd contraction of her mouth, "I have just had a note from Eden." He saw then that she had crumpled a piece of paper in her hand.
"Oh," he said, stupidly, his jaw dropping, "what's he writing a note about?"
She pushed it into his hand. "Read it."
He read:
