Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/35

 'Nor all artists paint pictures,' he added in the same vein.

Roger was a little tantalizing this morning.

They walked on in silence for half a block.

Then, 'What is the little high-school girl's name?' Roger inquired.

He was more than tantalizing! He was dull and lacking in perception. Wasn't he aware that she didn't want to talk about the little high-school girl now? Didn't he know that in ten minutes they would be at her front door, and that this was the only ten minutes that they would have alone before he left for his train? There was never any opportunity for conversation alone on Sunday once inside the heavy black-walnut doors of her father's house. Her father always monopolized Roger after dinner.—Roger knew it. This wasn't the first Sunday he had spent with her.

'Her name,' Cicely replied, 'is Miller.' Cicely's voice was flat and uninteresting.

'Miller? Miller what?'

'Miller is her last name, Roger,' patiently Cicely explained.

'And what is her first?'

Really he was incorrigible!

'Sheilah.'

'Sheilah Miller. Sheilah Miller.' He said it twice. 'That's pretty.'