Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/217

 'Dallinger. Roger Dallinger.'

She repeated it. 'I'm afraid it doesn't help me very much.' And yet Dallinger—Roger Dallinger—it had a vaguely familiar sound. If she had read the papers, as she should, she would no doubt know who he was. 'Probably you're the celebrity,' she said.

'Oh, no, I'm not.'

She made a helpless shrug. 'Well, won't you help me a little and tell me why I ought to know you?'

'You oughtn't to. You never saw me before. But I've seen ''you. I've every reason in the world for remembering you. The whole course of my life was changed by you. ' '' His eyes (dark eyes, framed dark, that is) were sparkling beneath their charcoal arches, as if he very much enjoyed the situation. And he did enjoy it. There was a streak of boyish fun in him that he had never outgrown, never would. The expression of amazement in Sheilah's face was too delicious to resist. He would amaze her still more. 'Why, I suppose,' he went on gleefully, impulsively (he had never outgrown impulsiveness, either), 'I'd be a settled married man with grown-up children by this time but for you.'

Did older men talk like that nowadays? Of course boys used to, years ago. They called it 'a line.' Sheilah remembered perfectly this particular kind of line. Hyperbole. Extravagant exaggeration. She