o'clock. Who would be calling her so late? She rose wearily, and went out into the hall.
Roger did not catch the nine-thirty express from Wallbridge after all. It rumbled into the station and out again, while he was shut up in a telephone-booth, trying to establish communication with Terry, Vermont. The telephone-booth was cheap and battered, lined with pressed tin, and smelling of stale tobacco. He felt the same old distaste that he used to, in receiving Sheilah's voice in such unlovely surroundings, but he was in too much of a hurry to seek a more fitting place. He also felt the same old eagerness and excitement, as he impatiently waited for his call to be completed, increased to-night, by uncertainty. Would she wish him to call her? Her loyalty to Felix would be burning just now with abnormal intensity, he felt sure. Would she under stand he respected that loyalty, and wanted only to share with her the burden of the shock of sudden death? Or had renouncement dulled her old understanding, and time cured her of her old need of him?
Anxiously he waited for her voice to find its way over the miles and miles of cable, stretched between him and her, and when finally it did, it was so rich and vibrant, it was as if she herself had come the long difficult way through the dark to him.
