Chapter One

In the pier glass, looking down, Margaret could watch careful fingers working over a cascade of white silk. Looking up, she saw her own disheveled, curly red head and her shoulders rising in unfamiliar nakedness over an intricately tucked and pleated frill.

Margaret's mother sighed. "I don't know how you do it, Isabella."

"Sewing is recreation for me, Jean. And to make a wedding dress for my own daughter-in-law, whom I knew before she was born-how many people can have a pleasure like that?"

Affection shone from Isabella's eyes. They were opalescent and wide set, like her son's. Like Adam she was erect and dignified. But where she was talkative, he was silent. His intelligent face with its even, symmetrical features was somber, a somber, romantic face. Mysterious. Heroic. Margaret had fallen in love with it when she was fifteen years old.

If Adam ever leaves me, she thought suddenly, I shall die.

He had last telephoned on Monday, just after she had come home for spring break. Before that he had not called since the previous Thursday. But they had always talked to each other every evening after eight. They would talk just under three minutes, yet it seemed, although two states lay between his university and her college, as if he had his arms around her.

When had it begun to change? Or had it really changed? After all, he was on the final stretch of the hard road toward his degree. So perhaps she was only imagining things. A word unspoken, a glance evaded, a telephone call missed-if you were looking for signs, you could find them, couldn't you? You