Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/173

 some women, who carry a hidden burden—a hidden burden that in Felix's case had grown heavier and heavier with the years, as it became more and more evident to him what he had done to Sheilah.

He hadn't meant to. He had meant to be all the things Sheilah believed he could be, that he believed he could be too, with such a talisman. He had thought that the miracle of his marriage to Sheilah must perform some sort of magic upon him; that no one could enter the charmed atmosphere that surrounded Sheilah without becoming charmed a little by it, too. But somehow the magic hadn't worked, the charm had failed, and instead of growing into the image of Sheilah, as he had so tried to do, she had somehow grown into the image of him. The home he provided for her, for instance, where she lay sick and broken this afternoon, much more resembled the grimy white house where he was born on nondescript Flower Street in Wallbridge, than the cool, broad-verandahed, lawn-surrounded mansion where Sheilah had lived as a young girl.

The mansion had been made over into an apartment house now. It had been sold at the end of the war for just enough to wipe out a list of debts that had to be paid when Sheilah's father died, soon after peace was declared. Her mother had lived on alone afterward in one of the made-over apartments on the income from one small life-insurance policy.