"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. "I'm glad you didn't say what girl," retorted Grace, and therewith subsided into her gloomy meditation again. Betty took up her book and Amy went on with her knitting while the rain came down in torrents and the surf thundered and roared. Mollie turned from the window and looked at them, and the whole situation suddenly appealed to her rather hysterical sense of humor. She began to laugh, and the longer she laughed the harder she laughed till she sank into a chair and shook with mirth. The other girls first looked surprised, then alarmed. Betty threw down her book and went over to her. "For goodness sake, Mollie, what's the joke?" she asked, as Mollie looked up at her with red face and watery eyes. "If it's as funny as all that I think you might share it with us," added Grace. "Oh, it isn't funny," gasped Mollie, "it's h-horrible." Then as suddenly as she had begun to laugh, she began to cry with great sobs that tore themselves from her and seemed utterly beyond her control. Alarmed, the girls soothed and patted and comforted her till finally the storm had passed and she became more quiet. "You must think I'm a p-perfect idiot," she sputtered, raising swollen eyes to them. "I don't know what in the w-world g-got into me. I just went all to pieces." "So we see," said Betty, while she gently wiped Mollie's eyes with a clean handkerchief. "But please don't do it again," she added whimsically. "I don't believe we could survive another one."