Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/297

 than friends, as it is phrased, still their love for each other, hidden though they kept it, slowly and inevitably continued to grow and to expand under the constant warmth of their companionship, as the life hidden inside a shell slowly and inevitably grows and expands under the constant warmth of the robin's breast. The walls of the little front room finally proved too small to hold it. To Sheilah's despair the city itself finally proved too small to hold it.

It wasn't, however, until November, nearly six months after the dark night in the hall when Roger had kissed her, that Sheilah arrived at the conclusion that she must eliminate from her otherwise barren life her relationship with him. For a long time she turned her face away from the slow accumulation of evidences that it was having an undesirable effect upon her. She didn't tell even Roger at first. She kept it locked in her heart, like the secret knowledge of a fatal disease she would hide. Silently, fearfully, she watched one ideal of hers after another being attacked by it.

Her pride first became undermined. By the end of the summer she was ready to stoop to all sorts of cheap little tricks and devices in order to see Roger. Her sense of honor, too, was crumbling. After the first few weeks she was able to deceive Laetitia with-