Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/280

 CHAPTER

XXIX

“Some kind of internal explosion has taken place in our little family, dear one (wrote Robert Osterhout to his dead love); and is still taking place, which is rather a deliberate method for an explosion. They are keeping me out of it; even Pat will not confide in me.

Therefore I

infer that it is not so much her trouble as the others’. Con’s baby is now six months old; she had a bad time of it but the son is‘a lusty creature. About the time of his birth there was a quarrel between Con and Pat not wholly made up yet. But while Con was so ill, Pat stood by, a tower of strength. From:the way in which she gave up everything to look after Con and her household, I was almost ready to suspect a touch of remorse. But what about? There was the contemporaneous phenomenon of Cary Scott going away-so abruptly, quite without explanation. I ask myself whether it is possible that the old fire flamed up between Con and him and Pat was in some way involved. A tangled skein! “Dee troubles me, too. She has grown so subdued and inert. Her devotion to James would explain it, to a casual observer. It isn’t enough for me. There is some-

thing else. She withdraws from me, too; but she has always given me less of her confidence than the others. It is a sort of shyness, and at times it hurts. I so long to help her. But you can’t help another person who lives in a fourth dimension by herself.

“Pat is back in the rush and whirl of things, going faster than ever, but she does not seem to be getting as much fun out of it as of old. She is as little comprehensible as ever.”

276