This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE ELEVENTH VIRGIN

kiss her lips and listened to the gurgling of the water around.

It was twilight when they reached home.

June discovered before the week was over that Mr. Armand, during the spring and summer months, led the band concerts in the park a block away from her home. All through the summer the year before, she used to lie in bed and thrill at the little wisps of melody that floated in on the fragrant night. Often she begged her mother to let her go. There was little enough melody in their regular and placid lives. Her existence for the last six years had been so calm and restrained that now some little thing like a strain of music, the glance of man’s eye as he passed and the scent of a summer night aroused her strangely. There were no adventures to make her realize that life was joyful. When Adele and June were younger and their parents had been engrossed in making ends meet, there had been opportunities to run away and mingle with the crowds of children in playgrounds and play in the dirty streets with strange little girls and tell them wild, imaginative tales. Even the boys that June used to play with who now came to the house were distant and different. It was a humdrum life of lonesomeness and she was fifteen.

Adele and June made up their minds that while Mother was in the hospital and Mr. Henreddy was working nights they would take advantage of the

[29]