Listen." Jean's face changed.

Her eyes took that farseeing look of the dreamer.
She was looking full at Burns, but he knew that she did not see him at all.

She was looking at a mental picture of her own conjuring, he judged.

He stood still and waited curiously, wondering, to use his manner of speech, what the girl was going to spring now.
"Listen: Instead of all this impossible piffle, let's start a real story.

I--I've--" "What kind of a real story ?" The tone of Robert Grant Burns was carefully non-committal, but his eyes betrayed his eagerness.