Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/189

 however, the mere address of which brought the sudden color to her face. She hadn't supposed, after all these years of self-discipline, the sight of her name in the familiar handwriting that had once been so vital to her, would still quicken her pulse.

It was a letter she had been rather expecting—rather dreading, too—ever since Roger Dallinger had surprised several doctors by recovering from a severe illness last spring. A mutual friend kept Cicely informed as to outward events in Roger Dallinger's life. Cicely had been in Paris when the mutual friend had written her that pneumonia had swooped down upon Roger Dallinger, following an operation for appendicitis, and that it wasn't expected he could possibly pull through. She mentioned the hospital where he lay sick. Cicely on a sudden impulse had cabled flowers to be sent.

She regretted it later. Surely her brain must have been asleep to allow any such irrational act to occur. Long ago she had concluded never to stir up the ashes of that buried fire in her heart again. But she had been taken unawares. Because Roger was a year younger than herself (once such a secret thorn to her), and always so well, she had never pictured him as sick or dying. Surely she couldn't let Roger die without a sign or symbol of any sort in memory of all he had once been. Not that he would care. He would be too sick to know, perhaps. But cabling