BY ANA ACLE, ALFONSO CHARDY AND MARTIN MERZER

 The cell phone rang and the lawyer told the family spokesman: ``We lost.'' The
 spokesman turned to the family and he searched and he could find no other
 words. ``We lost,'' he said. It was precisely noon Wednesday, and it was over.

 They stepped outside La Ermita de la Caridad, the seaside church in Coconut
 Grove, the church that faces Cuba, and some gazed toward the horizon. A few
 crouched and absently plucked blades of grass. A few shed tears. One
 confronted a TV photographer.

 And then, during their last hours of torment, the South Florida relatives of Elián
 González disappeared, seeking sanctuary and seclusion in a Little Havana
 hideaway known only to a few.

 When the boy's plane took off at 4:41 p.m. and when it landed in Havana at 7:48
 p.m., the relatives were nowhere to be found, reduced to bystanders in the
 drama's last act, monitoring events like everyone else on TV or radio.

 Others who had become familiar figures in the long-running Elián González saga,
 the lawyers and the activists, the politicians and the nun, were also off stage,
 huddled around televisions and radios or, in some cases, deliberately avoiding
 news of what was taking place.

 Some expressed acute sadness. Some spoke with pride that the battle -- though
 lost -- was waged vividly and aggressively and, for the most part, through the
 mechanisms of democracy. And some clung to their anger.

 This, however, was clear to all: It was over. Finally over.

 Delfín González, the great-uncle: ``You want to know how I feel? I feel like a
 person who wanted a boy to live in freedom.''

 Once a spectacle that stretched from Northwest Second Street in Little Havana to
 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., from family court to federal court, the
 Elián epic compressed itself Wednesday into a chartered jet that dashed from
 Dulles International Airport to Havana.

 `NOT THE END'

 Exile leader Ramon Saúl Sanchez stood in front of the family's now famous and
 still modest home in Little Havana and stared at a television monitor as Elián left
 U.S. soil. His head was bowed.

 Many people around him wept and moaned as if in physical pain. Sanchez spoke
 very quietly.

 ``There is no question this is a sad day for our community, but it is not the end of
 the road,'' he said.

 Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, the president of Barry University who became entwined
 in the family dispute, was walking off a plane at Miami International Airport at
 about the time Elián was boarding his plane.

 She tried to mediate the family dispute and ended up believing that Elián should
 remain in the United States.

 ``I hope God will provide a safe and loving environment for Elían,'' O'Laughlin said
 as she returned to campus. ``I hope he will grow up to be the man his mother and
 probably his father desire him to be.''

 Earlier, the Miami relatives who became so familiar to the world, who so often had
 courted media attention, had sought privacy -- but this proved difficult.

 A dozen family members, many of them children, drove to St. John Bosco Church
 on West Flagler Street. The media followed. The family moved on.

 Finally, the caravan arrived at La Ermita de la Caridad, a touchstone for the
 Cuban-American community. The relatives and their lawyers retreated to the
 church basement, and they prayed.

 GETTING THE NEWS

 At noon, attorney Kendall Coffey received the phone call. Soon, a colleague,
 Manny Diaz stepped outside and into the glare. He strolled along the water. He
 looked to the horizon.

 Delfín González, the great-uncle, also stepped outside. He crouched under a
 palm tree. He and another relative, Alfredo Martell, concentrated on the grass,
 occasionally tearing at blades, not knowing what else to do.

 Soon, they were joined by Marisleysis González, the cousin who became a
 surrogate mother to Elián. She swiped at her tears.

 Then, she and her father, Lázaro, noticed Calvin Telfair of WSVN-Fox 7, whose
 camera was rolling. Lázaro González confronted him.

 ``Is this what you want?'' González said in Spanish.

 His daughter stepped between the two, pulling the father back.

 Now, Delfín González approached a Herald reporter.

 ``Why don't you guys hound the people in Washington, D.C.?'' he said. ``You
 come to us because we're the weaker ones.''

 Later, most of the relatives sought refuge at the Little Havana home of Georgina
 Cid, a sister of Delfín and Lázaro González. Lázaro and Marisleysis did not
 appear again in public. Most of the family watched events on TV or listened to
 radio accounts, friends said.

 The lawyers returned to their offices. Coffey and Diaz diligently avoided any more
 news.

 ``The TV was on, but I closed the door,'' Coffey said. ``I couldn't watch it. It was
 heartbreaking.''

 Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and Miami Mayor Joe Carollo also avoided news
 reports.

 ``I'm grateful we have a democracy here where his Miami family was able to go
 through the courts,'' Carollo said. ``Even if they don't like the outcome, they have
 to be grateful of the opportunities here that Cuba doesn't have.''

 Still, Carollo was bitter.

 ``Whatever happens to the little boy happens to him because that's what this
 administration wanted.''

 In Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno worked in her office as the plane
 carrying Elián took off. Earlier in the day, she had been in Orlando. Later
 Wednesday night, she was to attend an American Bar Association event.

 `BITTERSWEET' MOOD

 Reno's role in the affair will be debated in her hometown of Miami for many years.
 But in the end, her aides said, the law prevailed and that is how it must be for the
 nation's attorney general.

 ``The mood here is bittersweet,'' said one top Justice Department official. ``We did
 our job. Many would have liked to see Elián and his father stay in the U.S., but
 that was not his father's choice.''

 Carlos Saladrigas was one of the people working to arrange Elián's transfer when
 federal agents seized the boy during that April 22 pre-dawn raid.

 Saladrigas is chief executive officer of ADP TotalSource, a human resources
 company in south Miami-Dade, and he was at work when the jet took off, and he
 did not -- he would not -- switch on the television.

 ``It's something that saddened me incredibly,'' he said.

 The most familiar backdrop during the long drama was that house at 2319 NW
 Second St. in Little Havana. Again Wednesday, angry Cuban Americans gathered
 there by the dozens, crying and hurling insults toward the Clinton administration
 and the media.

 A woman, eyes rimmed red from tears, shouted at camera crews: ``Communists,
 Communists.''

 Some sought to foment traffic-clogging demonstrations, but they were soothed by
 Sanchez, leader of the Democracy Movement. He is 45 years old, and he has
 been doing this sort of thing for many years.

 No, Sanchez said into a bullhorn, no violence and no disruption.

 Now, he said, exiles must renew efforts to undermine Fidel Castro. He proposed
 another flotilla toward Cuban waters in mid-July.

 ``We want to remind people,'' he said, ``that we still have a larger struggle.''

 Herald staff writers Frank Davies, Mireidy Fernandez, Don Finefrock, Sara Olkon,
 Charles Rabin, Jay Weaver and Jack Wheat contributed to this report.