Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/74

 the clean-cut outline of the shadows on the snow growing blurred and faint. Disappearing entirely finally. There was a soft, mouldy-gray cloudiness over everything now. It was much warmer. It began to snow in the early evening. The snow turned into rain during the night. Sheilah, again lying awake, could hear it, pattering against her windowpane.

The next morning when she went to school, the firm white drifts of the morning before were shrunken, like an old person's skin over muscles that have lost their tone, and their soft silky surface had become coarse-grained and gray.

Mrs. Miller always remembered that it was during the January thaw that she became seriously concerned about Sheilah. That was several weeks before Sheilah's actual 'breakdown' (she always referred to it as Sheilah's 'breakdown'), so she hadn't been careless or unobservant. She remembered it was during the January thaw because the walking was so frightful on the morning when she went over to the high-school to talk to Mr. Bond, the principal, about Sheilah's work.

All the fall Sheilah hadn't been eating very well, but 'the books' said it was wiser to ignore the fluctuations of a growing girl's appetite than to central-