Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/193

 FLAMING

YOUTH

189

And between us there is no reason nor place for anything but honesty.” She came to him then, encircled him closely, drew her

lips from his, after a time, to murmur: “You understand me so. When you say things like that I’m crazy about you.” Against his better judgment he said: “I wonder how much you really care for me, Pat?” “Oh, an awful lot! Or I wouldn’t be acting like this, But,” she added with pensive frankness, “I’ve been just

as crazy about other people before.” “I see. It’s the normal thing for you io feel this way toward someone.” “Oh, well; you expect to have somebody in love with you,” she explained. “Think how lost you’d feel without it. And it’s natural to play back, isn’t it? Now P’ve hurt you.” She spoke the words with a kind of remorseful interest as an experimentalist might feel pity for the animal under his knife. “That doesn’t matter. One gets used to being hurt.” All woman, at this she tightened her embrace. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I do love you. Only with me it doesn’t last.

But there’s never been anyone who inter-

ested me as much as you do. I don’t see what you find ix. me, though.” ‘Said the rose to the bee.”?” He forced himself to laugh as he gave the quotation. But within, the cold disillusionment of whatever blind hopes he may have felt, which had underlain his passion from the first, asserted itself. What constancy could he expect from this will, of-the-wisp girl? And what could a lasting attraction mean for her except such unhappiness as he knew himself fated to suffer? He took his resolution, Whatever might come to him he must so command himself and his actions