Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/301

 met unexpectedly, late one afternoon, just outside the parking-space where Roger left his car. Sheilah was standing on the sidewalk, beside a lighted shopwindow (it was November and dark), waiting for a street-car to take her home. Roger saw her as he turned the corner.

There followed half an hour of such sweet and poignant reunion inside Roger's car, that all Sheilah's firm resolves were swept away. After that, for a brief week or two, she succumbed. Roger came to see her again. And thus it was proved the city wasn't big enough to hold the thing between them that insisted upon maturing.

'One or the other of us must go away,' finally Sheilah told Roger. 'There must be space between us, so that it is impossible for us to see each other.'

'I doubt,' said Roger, 'if even space can keep us apart now, Sheilah.'

'Well, our wills can then,' she replied grimly, 'and space will help.'

She was seated during this conversation beside Roger in his car, drawn up in the black shadow of an empty building. This was the third time since their reunion that Sheilah had met Roger outside the parking-space by the shop window, as if by accident.

'Oh, can't you see,' she burst out now, 'I can't go on seeing you like this, and yet I can't stop seeing you like this or any other way, it appears, so long as