By night there was no trace of the ecstasy of which Roger Dallinger had caught a glimpse in Sheilah's face in the morning. It had disappeared entirely. So had the cause of it. That was the way it always was with her joy lately, Sheilah thought to herself, as she lay waiting for sleep to come to her that night.
It would begin to disappear almost immediately after its arrival and trickle away slowly bit by bit. She tried to hold it, but it was useless. Like trying to hold fine dry sand. It sifted out in spite of you, however tightly you grasped your fingers. Now, at midnight, there wasn't left a single shining grain of her confidence and courage of the morning. Instead there was fear again—thick soggy fear. Like heavy brown mud, which clings in clods, however hard you try to drop it.
Felix had walked home with Sheilah from the evening service of the Young People's guild that night. He had been walking home with Sheilah every Sunday night all winter now. Walking home from the Guild and skating on the river were the only times when she saw him alone. When the wave of courage had swept over Sheilah in the morning,
