Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/352

 'You're sure you wouldn't mind?'

How he grasped at it!

'Of course not.'

'And you'll ask me another time?'

'Certainly,' she laughed. 'Go up and pack your things. I'll have a taxi called for you, and you can catch the nine-thirty express, if you hurry.'

Thus it is a thoroughbred accepts defeat.

At the same moment that Cicely closed the door of her room that night with fierce determination to shut out from her consciousness the thought of Roger now definitely denied her, Sheilah, behind another closed door, miles away, also fought the thought of him. All the long tense hours since Phillip had come running home with his shocking announcement, underneath her armour of composure, again and again the thought of Roger pricked Sheilah. When would he hear? What would he do when he did hear? Would he break their long silence? Or had her freedom come too late? Oh, uninvited, unwanted, and unworthy thoughts at such a time! Why did they persist? She wanted to think only of Felix, and to think of him with loyalty, with grief, with pity. Poor Felix—poor, kind, bungling, ineffectual Felix. Dead—gone. And so unnecessarily. So ignominiously. Swept into the unknown by a mistake—a