Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/69

 close, intimate circles and oh'd and ah'd in undertones. The biggest circle of all to-day gathered around Pamela Hyde. She became red-cheeked with the excitement of her sudden importance. Everybody seemed to think her very clever to have caught a cheat like that.

Sheilah didn't think her clever. Sheilah thought her mean and contemptible. Why, Pamela Hyde had cheated too! She had cheated Felix—a fellow-student, a comrade, and that was worse sportsmanship than cheating teachers, who were often enemies. She would tell her so, sometime, too! Not now. Now she would go to Felix. He was alone in there—despised and scorned, and stared at. She was something special to Felix. He was something special to her. They both knew it. Only a girl as mean and contemptible as Pamela Hyde would desert Felix now.

Sheilah crossed the hall from the classroom opposite, where she had been hovering, and reëntered Room 12. She closed the door behind her, standing for a moment with her back against it, gazing at Felix.

He didn't look up, but he was conscious of the sudden relief of the closed door, and muffling of the buzz and chatter. He was conscious, too, a moment later of the soft, swishing sound of a felt eraser rubbing against a blackboard. Sheilah was erasing