Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/64

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any division in any subject with Sheilah. He had never recited in the same room with her.

As he entered Room 12 at the end of the line of the dozen or so pupils of his division, he shuffled into the brightness, keeping his eyes downcast, yet seeing Sheilah too, over there by the window in the sunlight. He looked for a back seat, but there was none empty. He was obliged to take a front one immediately opposite the platform. He slid down underneath the desk as far out of sight as he could get. But it didn't cover him up very well. Why hadn't he escaped when he had the chance out there in the hall, and suffer the consequences? Even when he had prepared his lesson in Latin—spent long laborious hours with dictionary and grammar, and under Miss Bigelow's kind and gentle protection, he was never anything but awkward and shy. But to-day he had not prepared his Latin at all. He had sat with the book before him for a whole hour last night—true—after he had left Sheilah, but his thoughts, his feelings——. He had given it up finally, and shoved the book away. If it weren't for Sheilah, Felix wouldn't be taking Latin at all. It was so that she needn't be ashamed of him that he was trying so hard to go to college. He glanced at the door. Too late to escape now. Well, perhaps—possibly—there was just a chance that he might not be called.