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 FLAMING

“No!

YOUTH

257

For what earthly reason?”

“I can’t tell you.

Yes, I can.

I can tell you any-

thing—now.” She flushed, but looked at him unflinchingly. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” “It’s unutterably sweet,” he said. “It’s the companionship that is deeper and more lasting than any other association.” “But there’s always been that between us,” she mused. “Only,

it’s different

now.

I don’t

quite

understand;

there’s so much I don’t understand, Cary, dear. But I know that I want to tell you. I don’t believe Dee would mind.” She repeated Dee’s bitter protest over James’s breach of faith, her refusal to accept maternity, her recent resolution to quit her husband at whatever cost of scandal. “And now she can’t,” she concluded.

“You mean that she won’t.” “Yes. Dee’s a good sport. She’ll stick to a man when he’s down. The worst of it is, she told him why she wouldn’t have a baby of his; because he was just a bunch of pure selfishness. And then he goes and pulls a real hero stunt and deliberately throws his life away for a Dago brat—and doesn’t save the darn thing, anyway,” concluded Pat, her lips quivering. ‘Where does that

leave Dee?” “Was it what Dee said that drove him to do it?” “No. It was too quick for that. He did it instinctively. It must have been in him all the while to do the big, selfsacrificing thing when it was put up to him. Like the men on the Titanic that everybody thought were wasters. That’s what makes it so rotten for Dee. She thinks she’s misjudged him all the time. I believe she’d give her life now to have a child for him.” ‘Well? queried Scott.