Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/324



evening Felix and his father went to a political rally in the town hall. After Sheilah had tucked Phillip into bed, also Felix's mother, and called to each 'good-night,' she went to her own bedroom and closed the door. On a high shelf in her closet, inside a box, where she kept woolen things in camphor-balls, there was a packet of letters from Roger, hidden in the folds of an old India shawl of her grandmother's. Sheilah did not allow herself to read these letters often, but she felt in great need to-night of some actual proof that she hadn't run away from an unreality, a dream of her own romantic making. They were beautiful letters, a dozen or more, written during her first six months in Terry.

When Sheilah and Roger had separated they had agreed not to write to each other, but Roger had ignored the pact. How Sheilah had loved him for ignoring it, and with what joy she had received each testimony of his thought of her. She had not answered the letters. But she had allowed them to continue—weakly allowed them to continue, she supposed. She knew the effect of the arrival of a letter from Roger, the immediate mounting of her spirits, was not well for her. It was like secretly drinking