Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/143

 the line. Usually he read it out loud, fondling the words with his voice, as well as with his eyes, stopping a long time after the 'Felix' to let it sink deeper and deeper into his consciousness.

In July she sent him a picture postcard from Switzerland. Across a very blue sky, above a white-capped mountain, she had written a message. 'Hope everything is going beautifully, Sheilah!' To Felix the message became a second prayer to read at night. And not only at night. For not only across the blue sky on the card, but above his head, among the clouds as he walked, he saw her message and her name. He thought the card itself was the most beautiful one he had ever seen. The blue sky flushed into a lovely peach-like pink along the horizon line of the mountain, and she—Sheilah had picked it out for him! He cherished it as if it were a sacred symbol.

The fact was Sheilah had jotted down Felix's initials in the corner of the card, where later the stamp was to be affixed, without even looking at the other side. There had been several other cards, and she had allotted them all in the same hasty fashion, on the eve of the day she was leaving Switzerland. True, later, she had hesitated, pen poised above the blue sky, before writing the message. And afterwards for a moment before adding the address on the other side. But if Felix was to settle in Wall-