Flip followed him outside. The evening was still and cold and there was a hint of blue-green left in the sky. The stars were beginning to come out. Flip looked up at the first one she saw and made a wish.--I wish Paul may always like me. Please, God. Amen. She wished on the star and there was a sudden panic in her mind because the Paul walking beside her was not the Paul with whom she had spent the afternoon. His face in the last light as she glanced at it out of the corner of her eye seemed stern, even angry, and he seemed to be miles and miles away from her. He had withdrawn his companionship and she searched desperately for a way to bring him back to her. "Paul," she hesitated, then gathered her courage and went on, "do you remember Christmas when you were very little?" "No," he answered harshly, "I don't remember." She felt as though he had slapped her. Why wouldn't he remember? She remembered those first Christmases so vividly. Was he just trying to keep her from talking? Had she unwittingly done something to make him angry? She glanced at him again but his face was unrelenting and she clenched her mittened hands tightly inside her pockets and said over and over to herself,--please God, please God, please God.... "I don't remember!" Paul suddenly cried out and abruptly stopped his rapid walking and wheeled about to face her. "I don't remember." His voice was no longer harsh but he spoke with an intensity that frightened Flip. She could only ask, "But why, Paul? Why?" He reached out for her hands and held them so tightly that it hurt. "I don't know why ... that's the hardest part. I don't remember anything at all beyond the last few years." Flip tried to make it seem unimportant--to say something, anything that would make Paul relax. None of this was as serious as he thought--lots of people had poor memories. Anyway it had nothing to do with their friendship. "Paul," she began--but he was not listening. He was not even conscious that she had spoken. "I don't want to frighten you," Paul said, "but Flip I have to tell you--I don't know who I am." CHAPTER FOUR _The Lost Boy_ Flip did not say anything. She just stood there and let Paul hold her hands too tightly and she felt that somehow the pain in her hands might ease the pain in his mind. Then he dropped her hands and started to walk again, but more slowly. When he began to speak she listened intently, but it was impossible to make it seem real. The story Paul was pouring out to her now was like a movie, or something read in a book. The concentration camps. The children and the children's parents gassed and burned. The cold and the hunger, and afterwards the lostness. The children in the DP camps. The children roaming and scavenging the streets like hungry wolves.