alby took
his hand and pumped it heavily. "We can't realize it, Mel. We just
can't believe Alice is gone."

His wife put her arms around Mel and struggled with her tears again.
"You didn't say anything about the funeral. When will it be?"

Mel swallowed hard, fighting the one lie he had to tell. He almost
wondered now why he had agreed to Dr. Winters' request. "Alice--always
wanted to do all the good she could in the world," he said. "She figured
that she could be of some use even after she was gone. So she made an
agreement with the research hospital that they could have her body after
she died."

It took a moment for her mother to grasp the meaning. Then she cried
out, "We can't even bury her?"

"We should have a memorial service, right here at home where all her
friends are," said Mel.

George Dalby nodded in his grief. "That was just like Alice," he said.
"Always wanting to do something for somebody else--"

And it was true, Mel thought. If Alice had supposed she was not going to
live any longer she would probably have thought of the idea, herself.
Her parents were easily reconciled.

They took him out to the old familiar house and gave him the room where
he and Alice had spent the first days of their marriage.

* * * * *

When it was night and the lights were out he felt able to sleep
naturally for the first time since Alice's accident. She seemed not far
away here in this old familiar house.

In memory, she was not, for Mel was convinced he could remember the
details of his every association with her. He first became conscious of
her existence one day when they were in the third grade. At the
beginning of each school year the younger pupils went through a course
of weighing, inspection, knee tapping, and cavity counting. Mel had come
in late for his examination that year and barged into the wrong room. A
shower of little-girl squeals had greeted him as the teacher told him
kindly where the boy's examination room was.

But he remembered most vividly Alice Dalby standing in the middle of the
room, her blouse off but held protectingly in front of her as she jumped
up and down in rage and pointed a finger at him. "You get out of here,
Melvin Hastings! You're not a nice boy at all!"

Face red, he had hastily retreated as the teacher assured Alice and the
rest of the girls that he had made a simple mistake. But how angry Alice
had been! It was a week before she would speak t