Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/191

 lously expecting something that day (which he had given her reason to expect) and he had squandered the precious moments in admiration of a little girl he saw in church. And she had shown her disappointment. She had been so impatiently hungry that day for all of Roger, that she would have been jealous of a dog, or a flower that had power to divert his attention from her. That was the way she had cared for him—the primitive, untrained, unproud, unqueenlike way she had cared for Roger Dallinger!

Well—let her not rehearse it. It always left her feeling so stripped and shorn! Anyhow, she had not acted in a primitive, untrained way. She had not pursued Roger.

At the end of her first year abroad she had met him at a dinner party in Boston, soon after her return, and he had gaily (he was always so gay), inquired if he might not run up to Wallbridge soon, and welcome her home personally.

She, looking back into his laughing eyes (if only in their brown depths she had discovered a little anxiety as to her answer), had replied as lightly as he, 'I'm rather busy, Roger. I'm starting for California in a week.'

And he hadn't urged!

Oh, why hadn't he urged?

Cicely shrugged now and sighed, as she gazed at the unopened letter in her hand. Then sitting up,