Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/228

 He was immensely relieved. He explained elaborately and at length why she should.

She played a very good game of bridge, but had been a little rusty. He had taught her all the new rules and conventions. The same with dancing. He had taught her all the new rules and conventions of dancing that he knew. She danced exquisitely, with instinctive grace. He loved to dance with her. So did the other 'Outsiders.' So did many of the other guests in the hotel.

Now, Roger, stretching out his arm in front of him, glanced at his wrist watch. 'Time to be moving,' he remarked. 'Five o'clock.' And he got up and strode over to her. 'Come!' he said peremptorily. He often assumed an exaggerated manner of command with her—it was part of the teasing—and usually she responded with an exaggerated manner of docility.

'All right, if you say so, but I hate to go. It's so heavenly!'

'I know,' he agreed, looking away over the rolling clouds of treetops below, toward the far, still horizon. 'Sharing beauty like this is the next best thing to sharing things we can't, isn't it?' he commented quietly, and then quickly, cutting off any possibility of reply, 'Come, we've got to go,' and he stretched out his hand toward Sheilah.

She placed her own in it, and he jerked her to her