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FLAMING

YOUTH

“Who was your friend in the service car, Dee?” asked the physician. “His name is Wollaston.” Cary Scott gave a start. “Wollaston! You know, I thought I caught a glimpse—— Then I supposed that my eyes had gone wrong in the sudden light. He was in working clothes, wasn’t he?” “Yes. He was the electrician from the plant.” “Stanley Wollaston? Electrician? It can’t be the same.”

“It is.

He recognised you and said that he used to

know you.” “Know me! Good God! I should say so! We were in hospital together for weeks in the war. Afterwards I visited him at their place in Hertfordshire. He was a poet and a dreamer then. I remember now. I heard that his branch of the family went broke.” “Where did you know him, Dee?” asked Osterhout. “Oh, it’s a long story, Bobs,” said the girl lightly. Herein she said what was not true. It was a short story; short and vivid and bewildering. In the darkness she ran over the whole scope of it, every detail as clear as if it had not occurred nearly a year before: the breakdown of her motor car in the open country near Rahway; the stranger on the bank of a stream who had put down his rod and come to her aid, a roughly dressed stranger with questing eyes and a quaint turn of speech; the long and patient tinkering, with the mechanism, ending in a second

collapse; the luncheon offered and shared, the talk that followed, a long, long talk such as Dee had never before known, running through luminous hours, touching all the realms of fancy until the incredulous sun turned his face

from them,and went down; the drive back to the village where she left him;

his final words, “I am resisting an