Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/309

 FLAMING

YOUTH

305

isn’t the same. I may have been a silly little fool, but —oh, Bobs! Can’t you understand?” “Who was the man, Bambina?”

At the old term of affection her face softened. “Can’t you guess, Bobs, dear?” she whispered. A blinding, burning illumination lighted up his memory of a hundred small, vitally significant facts, against which the sudden certainty stood forth, black and stark. “Cary Scott, by God!” Pat’s face was set. Her eyes, sombre but fearless, answered him. “The damned scoundrel!” “He isn’t.” “Isn’t? A man of his age to come into a house as a friend and seduce an innocent child!”

_

“He didn’t seduce me any more than I seduced him.” “Don’t talk infernal nonsense.” “It’s true; it’s true, and you’ve got to believe it.

It

was as much my fault as his.”

“Was it your fault that he left you, like a coward?” “He didn’t. I sent him away. He wanted to get free and marry me, and he would have done it if I’d let him. He was terribly in love with me, Bobs. Monty doesn’t love me that way. Nobody ever will again.” “Well, why wouldn’t you marry him?” queried the amazed physician. “Oh, I don’t know.”” She gave her shoulders the childish petulant wriggle of old, again the petite gamine of Scott’s patient love. ‘“He’s so old.”

“Then why in the name——” “You're

full of whys, Bobs.

It happened;

that’s all,

Nobody ever knows why nor how in these things, do they? I—I just lost my footing and drew him with me, if you want the truth of it.”