"That's what missing almost always means," insisted Betty, still in that strange, lifeless voice. "That," she added, as though speaking to herself, "was the column I always read first, because I was most afraid of it. I think," she got up unsteadily, and Mollie ran around to her, "that if you don't mind, I'll go upstairs a little while." She started for the door while the girls watched her dumbly, not knowing what to do or say. Then suddenly Grace ran after her. "Betty, darling!" she cried, her own grief forgotten in her pity for her chum, "let me come too, won't you? I don't suppose I'd be any good to you just now, but I'd do my best." "Let us all come, won't you, Dear?" begged Mollie, while Amy's eyes silently pleaded. But Betty only shook her head, smiling a pitiful little white smile, at them. "Not just now--please," she said. "After a while I'll--I'll call you." They watched her run upstairs and heard her door close quietly, oh, so quietly, behind her. Left behind, the girls looked at one another with wide frightened eyes. "Girls, she worries me," said Mollie, speaking in a whisper, almost as if there were death in the house. "She is so quiet and still. And when one knows Betty--" "If she could only cry a little," said Grace, speaking in the same tone. "It makes things so much worse when you keep them bottled up that way." "Betty's so proud and so brave," said Amy gently, as she sank into a chair and looked up, wide-eyed, at the other two. "Only this afternoon she let us see how terribly she cared." "And no wonder," said Grace, for there was real grief in her heart. "There never was a finer fellow than Allen. He made us all love him." "But there we go again, speaking as if he were dead," protested Mollie. "There is always hope, since his name is only among the missing." "Yes, of course; but it is generally as Betty said," returned Grace. "Nine-tenths of the men reported missing are either dead or have fallen into the hands of the Germans." Mollie shuddered. "Poor little Betty," she said. "The very thought of it is enough to drive her crazy." "If she would only let us comfort her," sighed Amy. "I--I really think that if she doesn't call us in a few minutes, we'd better go up anyway," said Grace nervously. "She looked so terribly queer and unlike herself that I'm worried to death. Hark! Did you hear something?" The girls listened, but all they could hear was the sighing of the wind about the house. Then, far off in the distance, came a soft rumble of thunder. "Oh, I hope it doesn't storm," cried Amy, shivering. "That would be about the last straw." And upstairs, in the room that Betty shared with Grace, grief and fear and horror stalked about unfettered and gazed upon the little figure on the bed.