Faint Echo — Natalie King

A Lesson for the Teacher...

Pretty home economics teacher Diana Gilmore is one of those picked by Wainsboro High School to help with a project for its "special" students-the mentally retarded youngsters who are only "faint echoes" of normal human beings. And Diana plunges into the work eagerly-mostly out of compassion, but partly to forget the recent break-up with childhood sweetheart Kevin Hedges. Before long the project is an obsession with the blue-eyed brunette--or so it seems to her brother Tom's friend, electrical engineer Jack Hunter, who has been waiting for her to forget Kevin. Now it appears he's waited too long. Between her work and making a home for her father and brother, there's no room in Diana's life for him, Jack decides. So when he's offered a job overseas, he accepts. Too late Diana realizes how important this quiet young man has become to her ... now, when she must say good-by to him forever...